On an October afternoon in 2017, I found myself making the familiar trek up the South Loop Trail, turning left at the junction toward Griffith Peak. All the other hikers were turning right toward Charleston Peak, which is higher, more prominent, and therefore more popular. But I have always preferred Griffith. Unlike Charleston, which is 16-20 miles roundtrip and arduous no matter which route you choose, Griffith Peak is under 10 miles and doesn’t require a pre-daylight start. It’s still a high-altitude hike with more than 3,000 feet of elevation gain, so it’s not easy, but as far as mountains above 11,000 feet go, it’s doable. It’s approachable, which doesn’t earn you bragging rights, and maybe that’s why more people don’t love it. Las Vegas is approachable too.
That day, it was just me in the meadow, just me among the charred bristlecone pines, their trunks blackened from the 2013 Carpenter 1 Fire, the echoes of a tragedy. I thought about down below on Casino Center Boulevard, where a week earlier a group of people had planted 58 trees in four days. And then I thought of the first day of October, when I’d been day-drunk at a pool on the Strip and then at home asleep in my bed — an afternoon nap turned into a missed evening — and then being awakened by my husband, who’d just gotten home from his shift at the Flamingo. There was a shooting, he said. It was bad.
I don’t have to tell you the rest.
All I know is that in the days that followed, I was filled with this unshakable desire to see the city from high above, from Griffith Peak specifically. When I got to the summit, the valley below was sunlit, the neighborhoods blue and silver, all shadows and contours.
Some people go into the wilderness to get away from Las Vegas. They want to see canyons and waterfalls and cliffsides — anything but the city. But there is a version of Las Vegas that only exists if you look at it from far away. I like this version of Las Vegas, which is still and silent. I like being able to consider it in its entirety — the people who live here, have lived here, have passed through here. It’s the one you see if you take State Route 160 over Mountain Springs Summit; if you drive the part of Interstate 15, where the map turns from blank beige to a grid of streets; if you go all the way east on Lake Mead Boulevard and look back at the road cutting between mountains, framing the Stratosphere with desert.
It’s the one you see from Griffith Peak. From up there, you can feel anything: grief, wonder, contempt, confusion. From up there, Las Vegas presents itself, soft and dreamlike, asking to be loved.
