Nevada Outside

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Jake's Wetlands, Minden

I spend last Saturday morning exploring the Martin Slough just off Ironwood Drive in the town of Minden. I was treated to a beautiful Common Egret (Bubulcus ibis) sharing a little promontory with a Canadian Goose. Common Egrets are often found wading in the shallows of wetlands holding ever so still with watchful eyes searching for prey. The Common Egret has true white plumage with a distinctive "S" shaped neck, yellow bill and black feet. The Common Egret was nearly driven to extinction in the late 1800's by the desire to adorn women's hats with their plumage. Thanks to early conservationists the practice was stopped and we have Common Egrets to grace our world today.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: I can't believe we havn't been to the Martin Sough and it's so close.
The fall colors and the egret is a photo that should be entered in a photo contest.
Absolutely beautiful!; 10/01/2008 6:30 AM
Nevada Hiker said...: It a nice place with great views of wildlife & Job's Peak.; 10/03/2008 6:32 AM

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The Geography of Hope

Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clean air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free from noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it.We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.

~ Wallace Stegner

A call to duty

I love to hike and wander through the Nevada Desert, to experience its ever-changing weather, and to face the Nevada Outback on its terms. It would be my hope that you would go out, get dusty, and explore Wild Nevada and experience the rugged wildness of the landscape for yourself. Before long you will thirst for the solitude of its 100 miles vistas and for a view of the sky that is so big it is beyond comprehension. You will find real solace in a small grove of quakies fluttering in a cool summer breeze high in a mountain canyon miles from nowhere. Perhaps in time you will sense the “Call of the Wild” in your heart fall and in love with the land, soon after that you will come to the realization that you have a responsibility to preserve and protect her. For Nevada has her friends who love her, but she also has those who are out to rape and plunder her for profit who care not for the land or the future , but only for their own riches. In the shortsighted cry for public access which is in reality the cry for machines to go anywhere and everywhere, they are unwittingly lobbying for her destruction. There are those who come in the name of recreation who are so caught up in the thrill of the moment that they ride rough shod over the landscape destroying in a day what it took nature an eternity to create. Therefore, it is up to the all folks who love Nevada to step up to the plate , get organized and make a stand. I ask you if you love Nevada and you know that keeping it it Wild is the right thing to do, then join us in the fight.

For Wild Nevada,

Kurt Kuznicki
Beltane 2008

The Need for Wilderness Areas

believe that at least in the present phase of our civilization we have a profound, a fundamental need for areas of wilderness - a need that is not only recreational and spiritual but also educational and scientific, and withal essential to a true understanding of ourselves, our culture, own own natures, and our place in all nature.This need is for areas of the earth within which we stand without our mechanisms that make us immediate masters over our environment - areas of wild nature in which we sense ourselves to be, what in fact I believe we are, dependent members of an interdependent community of living creatures that together derive their existence from the Sun.By very definition this wilderness is a need. The idea of wilderness as an area without man's influence is man's own concept. Its values are human values. Its preservation is a purpose that arises out of man's own sense of his fundamental needs.
-- Howard Zahniser (Author of the Wilderness Act), from The Need for Wilderness Areas

Home Means Nevada

Home Means Nevada Written & Music by Bertha Raffetto

Way out in the land of the setting sun,Where the wind blows wild and free,There's a lovely spot, just the only oneThat means home sweet home to me.

If you follow the old Kit Carson trail,Until desert meets the hills,Oh you certainly will agree with me,It's the place of a thousand thrills.

Home means Nevada Home means the hills, Home means the sage and the pine.Out by the Truckee, silvery rills, Out where the sun always shines,Here is the land which I love the best, Fairer than all I can see. Deep in the heart of the golden west Home means Nevada to me.

Whenever the sun at the close of day, Colors all the western sky, Oh my heart returns to the desert greyAnd the mountains tow'ring high.Where the moon beams play in shadowed glen, With the spotted fawn and doe, All the live long night until morning light,Is the loveliest place I know.

Home means Nevada Home means the hills,Home means the sage and the pines. Out by the Truckee's silvery rills, Out where the sun always shines,There is the land that I love the best, Fairer than all I can see. Right in the heart of the golden west Home means Nevada to me.

Nevada Outside

Saturday, September 27, 2008

2 comments:

Céad Míle Fáilte

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