When I set that yellowed paper on the lawyers desk in Winnemucca, he took his glasses off and said, Walt, do you have any idea what you are holding, because this is a water right with a priority date older than the state of Nevada, and there is not a lithium company on earth that can take it from you.
The man in the clean boots landed his helicopter in Junes pasture and told me theyd need the water rights on her spring for the processing plant, that Id sell or watch the water table drop until the spring ran dry.
He did not know what June drove to Carson City for in 1974.
The paper June kept in a coffee can under her rocking chair was a water right decree with a priority date that predates Nevada statehood, which means in the West, where water goes by first in time, first in right, my spring drinks before that mining company draws a single drop, and their whole plant depends on water that is legally mine first.
June dug that spring box with her own hands and planted the only cottonwoods for twenty miles, and in 1974 she quietly drove to Carson City alone and secured our water right, older than almost any claim in the state, and hid the decree in the cabin where she knew it would keep.
A senior water right like that is the strongest thing a person can hold in Nevada. The company cannot drop my water table without drying up their own operation first, and they cannot process lithium without water they are not entitled to before me.
The lawyer said in forty years he had never seen a priority date that old still in the hands of the family that filed it, and that the company had been counting on an eighty-two-year-old man not knowing what his wife left him.
When the man came back in his helicopter, I did not argue. I handed him a copy of the decree and I said, you told me at eighty-two Ive got better things to do than argue with a battery company. Youre right. I do. So heres my water right, older than Nevada, and it says my spring comes first. Argue with the state engineer if you dont believe me. The cattle and the antelope drink here, same as always.
He climbed back in his helicopter a lot quieter than he climbed out. The spring still runs. The cottonwoods June planted still stand.
Youve got better things to do than argue, he told me. I did not have to argue. June won this fight in 1974 and left the proof in a coffee can, and I sat in her rocker and read it twice and knew she was still looking after this ranch, and me.