Cliven Bundy’s War: Inside the Rancher’s Independent Sovereign Republic
by Zach Baron

It’s April in the Nevada desert, not even 11 A.M., and the heat is already physical, like something you could lean on. To those not yet accustomed to the republic, like myself, there’s a feeling of unreality to it. Even the view from up here, looking north: blue-green river shading to red-orange mesa shading to gray-red mountain, like a Looney Tunes cartoon.

From under the command tent at what some were calling Camp Tripwire and others Camp Liberty, maybe a mile down the road from the Bundy ranch—family home of Cliven Bundy, the rancher whose mostly successful rebellion against the United States government, eight days ago, has brought all of us here—you can see the whole of the camp: a dusty parking lot lined on either side with tents, boots outside in neat rows, and pickup trucks facing outward, for ease of escape. Before the republic—that’s what I’d been calling it in my head: the Independent Sovereign Republic of Cliven Bundy—this was a disused gravel pit. Now it’s a sandy hospitality suite for the men who’d come to fight. American flags flap noisily above folding tables stacked with rifles, banana clips of ammunition, oranges and Milk Duds, nail clippers and pens, lens-cleaning wipes and tortillas. One guy sits on a folding chair cleaning a .50-caliber anti-vehicle rifle, a gun about as long as I am. Another guy, named Cooper, is telling me about the latrines. They’d had them brought in a week ago, but now Cooper, as one of the guys charged with running Tripwire, has to figure out how to get them emptied.

“I will warn you,” Cooper says, when I ask where exactly I might find those latrines, “they’re kind of full.”

I wander out to them. The latrines are indeed kind of full. My eyes water with the smell of freedom.

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