Now is a great time to get outside — and not just because of the weather. In fact, if I were the type to indulge in grandiose, hyperventilating, all-caps overstatement, I’d say we got a full-on NATURAL WONDERS RENAISSANCE going on up in here. *Makes it rain with pine cones.* From Great Basin National Park to Sloan Canyon, there’s been a sanguine streak of victories and vindications lately affirming that — in contraindication to recent shady Congressional feints at, ugh, reanimating the corpse of a nuke waste dump at Yucca Mountain — the Silver State is not (to go earnestly bumper-sticker on you for a moment) a wasteland. Consider: After years of grassroots activism and populist realpolitiking, Protectors of Tule Springs finally saw preservationists’ dreams come true with the creation of the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument. And after years of idling on standby thanks to a sour economy, Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area gets an ambitious improvement plan this month, promising amenities that will raise its profile to match that of Red Rock and Valley of Fire. Up north, academics, preservation activists and park officials have launched a campaign to make Great Basin National Park, home to some of the darkest night skies in the continental U.S., the site of a world-class astronomical observatory. Next door, meanwhile, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California has introduced a bill that would protect millions of acres of desert just beyond our doorstep, expanding Death Valley National Park, Joshua Tree National Park and the Mojave National Preserve. And the continued push for land preservation by Sen. Harry Reid’s office promises to protect even more of our most sensitive, valuable and beautiful desert. In each case, sure, this expands the playground of Nevada public lands — this means more hikes to complete, more summits to conquer, more gorgeous vistas to use as selfie backgrounds. And, of course, it fosters a more ennobled kind of tourism that doesn’t involve drinking daiquiri out of a plastic Eiffel Tower without pants. But besides that, I also like to think these happy developments have in them the power to nudge the world’s perception of our personality, so the word Nevada instinctively evokes more than desert wastelands or neon misadventure.
And yet words like nature and phrases like public lands always conjure a certain out-thereness that make of the natural landscape an other, severed from our everyday experience. Well, you don’t have to drive or walk far to see real Southern Nevada. We bring out another installment of our much-loved hikes in your own backyard — and that applies whether your backyard is Henderson or Centennial Hills. Another story in this issue will make you reconsider how you think of Southern Nevada’s backyard — that is, Red Rock National Conservation Area. Certainly, it’s both a gem of a hiking destination and beautiful backdrop to the clamor and gleam of Las Vegas. But after you read Heidi Kyser’s piece, “ Stone Temple Zealots,” you might envision Red Rock as something closer to a holy site. Heidi’s deep dive into the world of rock climbers reveals a fascinating subculture of aficionados for whom the sport is much more than a sport. It’s also a philosophy, a religion, an obsession and a way of life. And Red Rock is their shrine, their ocean and, in some cases, their white whale.
But I’m flinging mere words to try to lasso a profound relationship that we flatlanders can only hope to understand. Which, to get grandiose again, is the point of getting out in nature in the first place: To momentarily divest ourselves of the approximations of language and enter a world where words don’t have to suffice.