This Is Elko 

I just got home from visiting Elko after nearly five years since I fled. I left Elko after a very nasty, unexpected, but much-needed breakup.  It had taken the almost four years that I lived there to grow to love the place. For the first few months I lived in Elko, I ate my sadness through the entire McDonald’s menu (because that’s all I found acceptable to eat). Every moment my brain was free to recall that I was permanently situated in a tiny cow town in Nevada, I was depressed. I devised every possible flight plan to get myself out of my living hell while I double fisted Oreos and everything ever made by the Keebler Elves. It took months for me to finally accept that if I wanted to see a movie, I would have to sit on a rickety, bodily fluid-soaked chair in their ancient theater. Whenever I got the opportunity to make it back home, I spent long hours wandering the posh isles of Target, lamenting how Elko was too ass backward to ever understand how beautiful a Target would be up on the hill instead of the nasty Kmart. What I didn’t realize until I looked up, out of my KFC Bucket of Shame, was that Elko was more than a Target. More than a comfortable movie seat. More than what you see at first glance. Before I knew it, I had established a very comfortable, happy life in Elko, enjoying the beauty that can be found when you open your heart and clear your mind of any preconceived notions. 
I was going to list the things that I love about Elko, but instead, I will just leave you with the following pictures. A few of you asked, about my previous post, “What is Elko?” Well, this is Elko. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

 
 
 
 
 
 
A lot the first pics are actually of Lamoille and Lamoille Canyon, but those places still mean Elko to me.   

48 thoughts on “This Is Elko ”

  1. Wow. That’s a lot of big sky and big mountains and big space. Even in the country of Ohio, with nothing but farmland, the sky and space around you doesn’t feel so big. So open.

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  3. Wow! These are gorgeous photos. Sometimes, when we are blinded by emotions, it does take a while for the cobwebs to lift from our eyes. I am glad that you looked up. They are beautiful 🙂

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  4. beautiful. All I can think of is as wonderful as your pics are of the clouds -is there some other meaning lying behind all the cloud pictures you have taken? like a metaphor . I could be reading too much into it. Glad you managed to go back to a place and find beauty in spite of past experiences

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  7. We’ve all experienced our own “Elko” I think. Not being able to see the forest for the trees and all of that. Your photos are lovely.

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  8. Amazing pictures.
    As they say “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone….”
    I love a BIG sky and that is one of the biggest out there for sure.
    Oh hindsight, why do you make us feel like this 😉

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  11. Sometimes, we get so darn focused on what we don’t have – what we think we MUST have, but are missing – we totally lose out on enjoying the beautiful gifts we DO have.
    Kind of true about a lot of things, isn’t it.

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    1. This is so well said and 100% accurate. The belief that the happiest people are those who live in the present is pretty much psychology 101. Yet, most of us live in the past and/or the future. I’ve missed you, friend!

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  13. I love this area. I have never lived this far North in Nevada. I have lived in Reno, and Yerington, but I love going there when I can. The open landscape, mountains, and big skies, defines freedom to me.

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