Author Max Wilbert on the environmental battle between the bright greens and deep greens theglobeandmail.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theglobeandmail.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
People rarely talk about the quiet on northern Nevada’s Thacker Pass, although besides the rolling, sage-filled hills below the Double H and Montana mountains and the empty, so-blue-it-hurts-a-little sky, the quiet demands your attention.
The silence awes Wendelyn Muratore, who lives about 5 miles away from Thacker Pass on an alfalfa farm in Kings River Valley. The land surrounding her home is so quiet that after snow falls she can hear her neighbor’s footsteps crossing his yard a mile a way.
“It’s a little tiny place on the map, but it’s beautiful,” Muratore said. “The solitude. The quiet. The beauty of the desert.” There’s nothing like the smell of sagebrush after a rain.
Pinyon-Juniper Removal Reduces Fire Risk But Could Harm Forest Ecosystems kunr.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from kunr.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on the website of the Carbon Tax Center. It is republished here with permission.
Though I’ve hiked all over the west, I’ve never been to Nevada’s northwest corner. On the map it’s a broad, empty strip from I-80 to the Oregon line. For hundreds of miles, it is in fact wild country and far from empty, biologically, ecologically.
Falk and Wilbert’s encampment. All Thacker Pass photos are from Protect Thacker Pass, used with permission
In January, a pair of activists, Will Falk and Max Wilbert, pitched a tent in one of the loveliest valleys of the region, seeking to rally resistance to a proposed lithium mine on public land. The place where they’ve established their protest camp is called Thacker Pass.