This is my second CLM internship, and also my second time living in Carson  City, NV.  This year I am participating in a different project with the BLM – monitoring and surveying the nearly threatened sage grouse habitat. This has meant much more hiking than last year, often far from a road of any kind, over rough terrain and in sweltering heat. All this off-trail trekking means that I’ve been able to see much more of the landscape than ever before, not to mention more of the wildlife. In one day last week we saw a heard of antelope, 3 goshawks and a red tail, several types of lizards, a rattlesnake, and lastly a scorpion (which incidentally decided to take up residence under my sleeping bag)! We have yet to see any bighorn sheep, but I’m hopeful that I’ll get to see some again this year before the internship is up.

I’ve heard a few people scoff at the fact that Nevada is the most mountainous state in the lower 48 (“Nevada has 172 mountain summits with 2,000 feet (610 m) of prominence. Nevada ranks second in the US, behind Alaska, and ahead of California, Montana, and Washington. This makes Nevada the “Most Mountainous” state in the country, at least by this measure.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada). I invite these people to try hiking a few miles off trail and see what they think of Nevada’s mountains, and no, that does not mean taking your ATV! That means using your legs and lungs and sweat glands = HIKING. Many people in Nevada have an aversion to walking for some reason. And whenever I go hiking in the Sierras,despite being on the state line, the majority of what I encounter are people from California and their dogs. I think this lack of “walking about” may contribute to Nevada’s lack of public interest in Public Lands. The land seems to be used more for free dumping than anything else. Perhaps if Nevadans could trouble themselves to leave their cars for long enough to appreciate what they have all around them, they would come to the same conclusion that I have. Namely, that their state is incredibly diverse and beautiful, and that it deserves better treatment and care.

Many things can be deemed nice and even beautiful from behind a pane of glass, rolling down the highway. But, some things have to be experienced in a physical way. You have to have the sun on your neck, grit in your teeth and the dust of a place in your nose before you can truly appreciate that summer storm and the way the rain makes the smell of sage hang in the air.