Just south of Highway 50, right smack in the middle of Nevada in Big Smoky Valley, is Spencer Hot Springs. About 10 years ago, Reno author, photographer, adventurer and turquoise-jewelry-maker Sydney Martinez was there with her husband.
“We arrived and got in an old metal cowboy tub or cattle trough,” she said. “And I remember sitting there and watching the sunset and seeing the wild burros in this amazing valley with the sky on fire and just being like, ‘Whoa.’”
Martinez fell in love with rural Nevada right then and there, leading to adventures all over the state, during which she took pictures, collected stories and watched the desert sky. That sense of “whoa” is what she tries to share with readers in her new book, Finding Nevada Wild.
Martinez believes Nevada and its diversity of beautiful landscapes don’t have the reputation they deserve. She hopes her book helps people see how Nevada is just as gorgeous as its neighbors. One thing she wants the book to do is “compare iconic world-renowned destinations across the West to what is in Nevada”—Lamoille Canyon compared to Yosemite Valley; Gold Butte National Monument to compared to Arizona’s Monument Valley, and so on.
“There are lush experiences in the Jarbidge Wilderness that are just as lush as some places in the Pacific Northwest,” she said.
Finding Nevada Wild collects the best of what Martinez, her husband and their dog, Elko, have found on their adventures. The 300-page book is organized into chapters by interest or activity, on hot springs, camping, beautiful drives, rural bars, dark skies, rockhounding and more.
Martinez arranged the book so readers looking for information about an area of interest would discover related things.
“Somebody could pick up the book and want to know about a hot spring and learn about the way a sage grouse sounds, or want to know about a really cool ghost town and … realize that there are some of the darkest skies of the world in rural Nevada, and find pictures that can inspire them to learn how to do astrophotography,” she said.
It’s a large-format book chock-full of color photos, so it could live on your coffee table for constant inspiration. While the book is full of ideas and inspiration, it isn’t a guidebook. It won’t tell you where to go or what roads to take, but it’s packed with information about places to go, things to see, streams to fish and sounds to hear.
Martinez reflected on how much she and her husband love the remotest parts of Nevada.
“I think that some of our happiest days have just been the three of us out in the middle of ultra-rural Nevada, hiking, rock hounding, going to hot springs, playing cards and making good campfire food,” she said.
Her research included the usual resources—books, maps, websites, interviews—and the secret sauce: Nevada locals.
“There were so many times when I would be out in the middle of the state, and someone would pull up in a pickup truck and ask, ‘Hey, wanna see this cool thing?’ … Or, we would be in a bar and somebody would say, ‘Hey, you’re Sydney. Let me tell you the coolest thing that I know.’”
Martinez didn’t share all the secret places she discovered, but she encouraged her readers to find them themselves.
“Go out there; you might find something even better than the places I’ll tell you about by name,” she said.
Martinez credited three local creatives who inspired and supported her, and who became mentors and friends: author Michael Branch, podcaster Fil Corbitt and photographer Scott Mortimore. Mortimore, Martinez said, knows more of Nevada’s rural roads than anyone. Corbitt inspired her to pay attention to the unique sounds of Nevada and to include a chapter called “Sounds From the Sage.”
“There are not many places in the world where you can go and not hear a power line reverberating or a neon sign or some kind of modern-man evidence out there, and Nevada is one of the places that you can,” she said. “Fil has really inspired me to think differently about places I had visited in a new way.”
Once she finished the book, Martinez began researching the Nevada legends she had heard about on her travels and wrote about them via a blog called “Legends of Lost Nevada.”
“The thing I like most is finding stories where there are multiple interesting things that thread together,” she said. “I really enjoyed the one I wrote about Josie Pearl, who was a badass woman prospector up in the Denio area. She was wearing diamond bracelets and ragged jeans and living way the hell out there in the middle of nowhere, and in that same area is one of Nevada’s first National Wildlife Refuges, the Sheldon, which is where the black fire opal was discovered. I love focusing on regions where people think there’s nothing out there, but if you look a little bit closer … you’ll find amazing things.”
Finding Nevada Wild will be released on Sept. 28. It can be preordered via Martinez’s website. At 10 a.m., Saturday, Sept. 13, she will appear at a book signing at Barnes & Noble. Also on Sept. 13, she be part of a panel discussion with Richard Bednarski, John M. Glionna and Mark Maynard as part of Nevada Humanities’ Literary Crawl at the Nevada Museum of Art, 160 W. Liberty St., from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m.
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