I’ve written before about how the pandemic has alternately seen me getting plenty of work done, but also slide into not being able to do so much as leave the couch. I don’t think I’m alone in that — we all seem to be living the mood yo-yo just now.
I’ve written road trip columns about some places I’ve been and, within the Atlantic region, about places other people should try. This is a road trip column, too, but of a different sort.
Last time we were in the western U.S. desert, searching out my great-great-grandfather William Castle Dodge’s route to the California gold rush, we were travelling well into the desert night, refuelling at a gas station in the cold November night at Ely, Nevada. It’s about 2,000 metres above sea level, the air thin, dry and not good at holding in the day’s heat.
We’d wound our way up through the dark and narrow curves and bends of Route 6, and we still had 140 miles to go to get to Wells, Nev. We gassed up, got some jerky — not much choice for snack foods, except for fleets of huge foil-wrapped hot-dogs — and because I’d forgotten to pack a hat for the desert sun, Leslie had picked out a Dodge baseball hat for me, half-jokingly, because we were on Dodge’s route, and it was a Dodge hat.
There wasn’t even a thought about COVID-19 then, though it was only months away from arriving with a vengeance in the U.S.
The days were still quite comfortably sunny, though “Last year this time, there was snow,” the attendant said as we paid.
There wasn’t even a thought about COVID-19 then, though it was only months away from arriving with a vengeance in the U.S.
Less than a year ago but feeling now like much more, the parking lot was full of cars, clusters of people standing close together smoking, packed carloads of teens gassing up and heading out into the night.
We — Leslie, the hat, and I — would head to Wells, overnight there and then drive through Winnemucca on our way to the Black Rock Desert, a massive Bureau of Land Management Reserve that’s almost empty of people.
Recently, still doing research for, now, two books, I was looking at a stretch of the Black Rock reserve where there had been opal mining, just north of our deepest foray into the desert.
It led, as things do, to more research, and an opal mine near Denio, right near the Oregon/Nevada border.
It’s 140 miles north of Winnemucca. At the Royal Peacock Mine near Denio, you can pay to spend the full day digging black opals out of the mine tailings or out of the bank itself.
It’s mostly paved road, at least as far as Denio Junction, and there’s no way the dirt road can even come close to the 100 scrambling dirt miles of the Jungo Road, which we’ve also driven from Winnemucca.
It didn’t take long to convince Leslie. Actually, it didn’t take any time at all. She’s almost as stuck on the desert as I am. When this is over, if we make it through and travel opens up again, we’re going to find a way to hit the road for the desert, and for the Royal Peacock, if the business has managed to survive the COVID-19 crisis.
It feels good to have a plan, however tenuous and distant the world might seem to be right now.
When we go, I am going to wear the Dodge hat and I am going to eat all the dangerous gas station hotdogs I want and I am going to dig the black fire opals, damn it, until I get big blisters on both hands and the desert sun has cooked me to my bones.
We all need something concrete to aim for. To look forward to.
How about you?
Russell Wangersky’s column appears in SaltWire newspapers and websites across Atlantic Canada. He can be reached at [email protected] — Twitter: @wangersky.
