photo courtesy Nevada Historical Society
Her silver tarnished,
this old mistress of the mines
is bedecked in junk.
***
Silver City is a decrepit mining town, pocked with holes, studded with splintered shacks and adorned with rusted cars, glittering in the late afternoon sun. It’s a ghost town that’s been revived, so why think about living there today?
Because its tiny population — a smidgen of the 1,200 living there in its heyday — knows one another. They’re raising their children together, which is why kids were camping in the park on a weeknight, and the city’s summer program is providing lessons to a teen garage band.
Because it’s hills are shades of coffee, its air is perfumed with sweet, pungent sagebrush, and the night sky sparkles with stars. Living there is a conscious choice to be grounded in location, tied to the land, to know a place.
This is what my parents gave me when we moved to Silver Springs in 1980. I wish I could give it to my children.
Well, couldn’t you? Why don’t you move?