Great Basin Bristlecone

A species of tree clings to the high, windswept slopes of Nevada's Great Basin National Park (GBNP), the least visited of all parks in the system. Bearing the brunt of brutal winters near treeline, the Great Basin Bristlecone Pine, or simply Bristlecone as Nevadan's say, can live to 5,000 years old, the oldest living trees on earth. Of all the national parks I've visited, this is my favorite. It's remoteness and lack of cellular reception keep the visitors to a minimum, making it a piece of earth that's hard for me not to love and cherish. It's the kind of park Edward Abbey described in his classic book Desert Solitaire during his 1956-57 tenure as the Moab park ranger, when few people even knew that Arches National Park existed. Five years ago I visited Moab. The temperature was well over 100 degrees and visitors were fighting over parking spaces in front of t-shirt shops. To get a taste of the Abbey experience today, there's no better place than GBNP. I've spent days and nights out there seeing little sign of human life anywhere beyond the small visitor center. From the 6,825' desert floor, Wheeler Peak rises to 13,167' with its tiny glacier struggling like its Bristlecone companions to survive the changes brought by today's unstable climate. It's a wide-open wilderness with a beauty easily missed from the car window, but richly experienced in solitude as the sun rakes its final minutes of light over the aromatic juniper and sage before one retires to the tent. This is the place a weary soul can go to draw lasting nourishment, inspiration, and peace, and where the glow of billions of stars across the Milky Way will light the path through the brush for an urgent midnight pee.