Never lived in a town so obsessed with self-hatred
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4/26/2013
I have lived here for 8 months now. Having lived in North Carolina, Maine, Illinois, and Washington, I feel I've had good exposure to a variety of climates, attitudes and ways of living. I've never lived in a town where everyone is constantly surprised that I'm living here. It's quite bizarre. Many places people make small talk over weather. Here they talk about how much they hate it here and ask for your story, because unless you were born here its an oddity that you found your way here. It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't find that many things to dislike here, but the general attitude is always putting how unhappy the residents are in your face. It's definitely a cowboy, miner, desert rat kinda town and people love to fight, drink, and gamble more than anything else so crime is my biggest concern. I wouldn't say I necessarily fit in here, but I don't really engage with people and I'm the kind of person that keeps to myself, no matter where I'm living. I don't mind the politics of the state, it's nice and diverse with most of the action coming out of Reno and Vegas so it tends to be more progressive, even though rural Nevada is very conservative cowboy country. I love the desert and the mountains here, it's incredibly beautiful and hard to describe without experiencing it first hand. Really big open spaces that go on forever with no one in sight. Big moons and countless coyote calls at night outside of town. Lots of wildlife and outdoor opportunities. Most people here don't know these things though. They seem oblivious to the areas outside of town and love to talk trash about what a terrible place it is. The most annoying is hearing people complain about the lack of water. I don't mind it, we're in a desert. I wouldn't have moved here if I expected lakes, oceans, rivers, and waterfalls. Oddly enough, there is water if you go up into the mountains only 20 minutes outside of town into the aspen lined creek beds of water canyon. People only go up there to drink and trash the place though. There is a real lack of awareness of an outside world and how many places in America aren't that different from here. It's sad that the residents can't have more pride in their community and make it someplace they want to be. At least stop throwing beer bottles everywhere and it might not seem so depressing. We're planning on moving in a couple of years. This is a good transitional place. Credit doesn't matter, since there's a housing shortage and a lot of people live in motels anyway. It's easy enough to find a job, but it might not pay too well. If you're lucky you'll hit it big and land a mining job, which is why people can make a lot of money here, gold digging. Things are pretty cheap. Food might be the only exception. That won't matter though if you get your groceries from Wal-mart, which I don't, but that's the one stop shop here for anything. Again, this place isn't that unlike many small towns in rural America, it just happens to be in the middle of a wild expanse of desert with nothing but government land that extends forever outside of town. Land is very cheap. Not particularly pretty, but cheap. There is plentiful ground water down below, so its not like Southern Nevada where there is an impending water crisis. This past January it didn't get above zero for a couple of weeks. I'd wake up to -20 on the thermometer each morning and wonder if I'd be able to open the front door. And of course it's really hot in the summer. It's not a particularly hospitable place, but it's different. A very wild west kinda place.
Bryan | Winnemucca, NV