This summer has been unbelievable in the amount of smoke, even in areas distant from the wildfires in California, Nevada, and the Pacific Northwest. In northern Nevada, rather than the rare smoky day, a day better than “moderate” air quality was something to celebrate. During much of July and August, the air quality never got better than moderate, and was often unhealthy or hazardous. In early August, when the smoke was so bad I could hardly see across the street, I decided to head to central Nevada, hoping to find cleaner air and a little peace and quiet.
My first stop was a BLM campground just south of Battle Mountain. The photos online showed a lovely little campground with large cottonwood trees and a little stream. I arrived to find that the campground had burned in June of 2017, taking out most of the cottonwoods, pinyon trees, and sagebrush (the photo at the top shows the remains of the campground). The campground was still open, so I decided to spend the night there, next to the little stream which was full of logs and debris but still flowing. As I pulled in to the campsite, I noticed a couple of semi trucks hauling dirt and gravel on the dirt road that continues up the canyon past the campground. The trucks ran up and down the hill every 15-30 minutes, all night long. My guess was that a new mine was going in somewhere up canyon; at any rate, it made for a lousy night’s sleep. I did, however, manage to record a few minutes of the stream and crickets:
I left the next morning and headed further to the Independence Mountains north of Elko. There, a small Forest Service campground was tucked into a small canyon along a stream. Sounded promising. When I arrived at the turnoff for the canyon, I passed a ranch at the bottom of the canyon where they were baling hay. I drove on past the ranch, and found the campground a few miles up the road. It was a nice little campground with a little stream lined with cottonwoods, willows, and alders. The first campsite was surrounded on three sides by very large cottonwoods, making it a nice shady location for the nap I was badly craving after the sleepless night listening to semis grinding gears up and down a gravel road. So I pulled in, and set up camp. I had just settled into my car, listening to the breeze in the cottonwoods accompanying yellow warblers, robins, and Lewis’ woodpeckers, when the rancher from down canyon drove by in a hay mower and started mowing a meadow less than a quarter mile up the road. The loud sound of the mower, including scraping over rocks, lasted until 6:30 that evening; so much for my nap. But once the mowing was over, a beautiful quiet descended. A couple of cars went by, but almost no planes; just the trees and the birds. I realized that the cottonwood trees over my camp were full of fledgling birds, fluttering around, vocalizing, chasing each other. Very entertaining to watch and listen to:
After dinner I took a walk up the canyon to explore. The Independence Mountains rise to 10,000 feet at Jack’s Peak. Not a real dramatic area, and full of cattle, but a nice remote area for someone seeking some quiet (during the non-haying season). The canyon bottom was loaded with ripe currant and serviceberries, and not-yet-ripe wild rose hips and choke cherries.
The nocturnal soundscape was surprisingly quiet. A couple of distant crickets, and some very distant coyotes. Mostly the whisper of the cottonwoods and distant whoosh of the stream. Nice sleeping sounds, especially in air that was nearly smoke-free. The baby birds were up early and back to their antics of noisily chasing each other around. After breakfast, I went and harvested a bunch of currants to take home to make jam, and serviceberries to snack on. Then it was time to head back south and west and into the smoke.
I headed to Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge, where I knew it would be hot and smoky, but it’s also an incredible place to record. Even though most of the breeding activity was over, there was still an abundance of waterfowl and the good chance to see and hear wildlife. I arrived just before dark, and left a recorder and set of microphones to record overnight at Stillwater Lake, at the southern edge of the refuge. The birds were still pretty active just after sundown:
Then I drove on north to the campsite at Lead Lake, ate a quick dinner (in the car as the mosquitoes were hungry!), set up the mics and crawled into my camper. I set my mics right on the edge of the lake (really a giant shallow puddle), excited about the possibility of recording the stilts, ibis, pelicans and other birds I could see on the water. I was comfy and reading my Kindle when I noticed headlights as a vehicle pulled into a boat ramp about 1/4 mile away. I hoped they would either not stay long or be pretty quiet, as they were well within the range of my microphones. About 15 minutes after they arrived, I heard the tremendously loud roar of an airboat. The airboat, and its occupants, covered every inch of the lake over the next hour and a half, shining very bright flashlights in every direction over the lake. I have no idea what they were doing, but my guess it was USFWS or researchers trying to capture and band waterfowl. About 10:30 pm, they returned to the boat launch, and I hoped that would be it for their shenanigans. But no such luck. At 12:30 am, they repeated the performance. And when they started their third assault on the birds of Lead Lake just before 3 am, I gave up, threw my gear in the car and headed back to Stillwater Lake. Even from there, I could hear the distant roar of the airboats (saw the lights of other boats on different lakes as I was driving out), but at least it was quiet enough to get a couple of hours sleep.
By dawn the airboats were gone, and the refuge was back to it’s normal wildlife cacophonies, interrupted only by the occasional military aircraft. I really needed to catch up on some sleep so, shaking my head at my bad luck this trip, I headed for home.