Finding Nevada Wild: A Personal, Unending Quest for a Second, Longer Look
This blog post is generously provided in kind by Sydney Martinez. The Double Down blog is also supported by Nevada Humanities’ donors.
By Sydney Martinez
Nevada Hot Springs. Image courtesy of Sydney Martinez.
When’s the last time you were set up to truly discover without the distraction of civilization, a digital nuisance, or anybody else? Where you can let your eyes focus on something far away and for a long time, and hear nothing but your own internal monologue?
After many years traveling to Nevada’s deepest, darkest corners together—Jonny, our dog Elko, and I—we’ve been fortunate enough to live a lot of awe-filled moments of authentic surprise. Where you can wonder what’s off in the distance down enormous valleys and even longer mountain ranges, and then legally follow the road to figure out what’s at the other end, which has turned into an unending quest.
Kingston Canyon. Image courtesy of Sydney Martinez.
All of the American West is celebrated for its mystery, enormity and beauty—everywhere except Nevada—which most people know only for Las Vegas, and the place the U.S. government decided was so empty, lifeless, and desolate it was the perfect place to blow up. But it’s true—these absurd stigmas that Nevada is genuinely beat up with—they exist for partially good reasons: most of its most special places are difficult to access, usually moderately dangerous, and tough to sustain for long periods of time comfortably. It’s mysterious, and to us, the most misunderstood state in the West.
American Kestrel caught, studied, and released at Hawk Watch International’s Goshute Mountains Wilderness. This bird was handled with care for the purpose of scientific research under all state and federal permit requirements. Image courtesy of Sydney Martinez.
As we sat out there that night, watching the steam swirl above us and disappear into a gravel road of stars, we talked about what it is that keeps us coming back out to this ultra-rural terrain over and over again and in the many nights since. We realized a large part of it is the challenge of what’s required to actually experience the special places, as if we have to prepare to truly survive out there without reliance from other people. Yet, we also discovered that the quest is more about a particular feeling—one we yearn to keep accessing as many times as we can. The feeling of knowing there’s something out there you can’t see right away. Something that takes a sharper eye to actually see. A second, longer look.
Black Fire Opal, Royal Peacock Opal Mines. Image courtesy of Sydney Martinez.
And the result is this! A 320-page, full color book filled with hundreds of color photos that’s a culmination of decades spent exploring and documenting some of our favorite ways to experience Nevada. As we ourselves discovered we’re on an unending trip into the high desert looking for hot water, caves and petroglyphs, darkness and quietness, vast wilderness corridors that allow wildlife to exist in the truest senses, lumps of turquoise and black fire opal, hiking and fishing alpine environments most people don’t even believe to exist here, and far beyond—we’re excited about where we landed because it not only helps anyone curious to see what’s really out there by figuring out a place to start, but as a whole, helps its reader understand Nevada’s many vast Basque, Buckaroo, and Indigenous histories you can’t learn from behind a glass display case in a museum.
Techatticup Ghost Town. Image courtesy of Sydney Martinez.
My publisher Schiffer and I were joined at the hip throughout this process to make sure the book is equally at home on your coffee table as it is inside your glovebox to use as you bump down Nevada’s gravel roads. But one of the things we’re most proud of is this: there are no directions or geocoordinates, nudging its reader to actually find their own piece of Nevada wild. While you’re out there looking for it, you may luck out and meet a new version of yourself along the way.
Fort Churchill State Historic Park. Image courtesy of Sydney Martinez.
Sydney Martinez is currently on a book tour promoting her project Finding Nevada Wild, and she will appear at The Writer’s Block in Las Vegas on October 25, 2025 and at The Martin Hotel in Winnemucca on November 8, 2025. Please visit FindingNevadaWild.com for more information. Ride along on her Nevada rambles on Instagram at @sydneymmartinez.
Sydney Martinez wakes up with alkali in her blood, sagebrush in her hair, and Nevada on the brain. Devoting as much time as humanly possible to learning the deepest, darkest corners of Nevada’s ultra-rurals, the people who protect them, and the bridge between the two, Sydney has professionally written about and photographed Nevada for nearly 20 years. Her work as a rural Nevada locations expert led to consulting for many Nevada local, state and federal agencies, including Nevada BLM, the Nevada Film Office, Nevada State Parks, Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, Nevada Division of Outdoor Recreation, and PBS Reno. She now focuses on developing her own brand, Finding Nevada Wild, while pursuing turquoise silversmithing under Song Dog Silver. She’s spent more nights in the back of her pickup truck than at home, which is exactly where she wants to be, so long as she’s got her husband Jonathan, dog Elko, and a Nevada hot spring bubbling up somewhere close by.