The Wright family on the Marys River

The Wright family is bringing change to Elko. But they don't see it that way. If it's old, it's good, they say. Maybe it's the times that are catching up with them as they try to hold on to the best of the past.

"We just like stuff the way it has been," says Bill Wright, the lean, weathered patriarch of the clan. "I grew up on horseback. The otters were there, the fish, the coyotes, the sandhill cranes. It's pretty. We like it that way."

Bill Wright always went his own way on the Marys River Ranch. When the neighbors sprayed their willows with herbicide thinking they would get more water from the river, the Wrights left theirs alone because they liked the shelter. "Any cowboy who grew up here knows you couldn't build a shed that would protect cattle as well as the willows in a big winter," says Bill Wright.

The ranch headquarters, a couple of houses, a bunkhouse, corrals and sheds, are nestled among the willows in the braided floodplain of the Marys River, 20 miles by dirt road from the nearest neighbor and the highway to town. Meadows flank the river, which meanders between low sage covered hills. Snow capped mountains rise on the horizon. There's nothing to stop the eye from gazing into the distance. It's all open. It's all part of the Marys River Ranch. And the Wrights want to keep it that way.

"We grew up knowing we were raised in a preservationist household," says Preston Wright. "My dad fought against plans to put a dam on the river. He fought against putting a power line through here and open pit mines nearby. Then when I went away to college, I was horrified to learn a lot of people thought I was a bad person at the very least because I was a rancher. I was defensive. I tried to justify it."

But if Preston and his brother John learned anything from their father, it was to be skeptical of conventional wisdom and open to outside interests. They knew they had problems. They could see parts of their ranch and the public land where they graze cattle were going downhill.

So the Wrights brought a holistic resource management class to Elko. It helped them see there was room for improvement, even on the Marys River Ranch. And it gave the sons a path to change. "We haven't perfected our
management," says John Wright. "I'd hate to be in a world where there's not new information coming in. I'm not content
just to hold on to the ranch and protect it. But I didn't know what my role on the ranch would be.

This has given me a role to instigate change."

"Part of the problem of changing ranching," says Preston, "is that the average age of ranchers is 65. Young people are rare in agriculture because it's no fun. It's not rewarding enough to keep young people in it. But if we were doing it right maybe we'd be making enough money and having enough fun that our children would stay in it."

Preston and John manage the Marys River Ranch together. John lives on the ranch with his wife Merrily, a poet, and their kids. Preston lives in Elko with his wife Patricia, a doctor, and their kids. Both John and Preston work on the ranch. But while John tends to focus on the nitty-gritty changes on the ground, Preston's horizons include the political environment in which the ranch operates. He is active in the Nevada Cattlemen's Association and recently was named to the Elko County Public Land Use Advisory Commission.

"For a while I was pretty worried," says Preston Wright. "After the Oklahoma City bombing, the media were running out here looking for outlaw ranchers, militias, and relating it to home rule and the county movement. I think the home rule movement has tremendous potential. But too many people view home rule as a way to do things the way we've always done them. Ranchers have to admit they're part of the problem. We get along with the BLM. But I think I might be able to influence my peers more than some agency can."

John Wright drew the illustration on this page for The Lowly Cowchip and Other Pungent Poetry, a book written by Merrily Wright and self-published by Marys River Publishing, Deeth, NV 89823.