Wiktionary
adv. (context idiomatic English) A long distance away from anywhere of importance.
Usage examples of "in the sticks".
When he'd first set eyes on his interrogator, McGregor pegged him for some young up-and-comer who'd be heading south for greater things once he'd cut his teeth in the sticks.
As she knelt before the low brazier on its tripod legs, Lady Eudokia cast a handful of crumbled herbs onto the fire and flames blazed up and caught in the sticks.
Eastern gays - especially out here in the sticks - apparently had a different way of dealing with rejection.
So they let him get a simple job on the railroad, where all he had to do was sit in a little clapboard house way out in the sticks on a lonely switch and wave a red lantern at the trains if the switch was one way, and a green one if it was the other, and a yellow one if there was a train someplace up ahead.
He got the notion that something might be concealed in the sticks on which the papyrus was wound and had them X-rayed.
This many years, you laboring with the kiddie schlock, me languishing in the sticks.