Todd Nash

County Commissioner, Rancher

Wallowa County, OR

9/2/2022

Students joke that our speaker, a rancher, will arrive on a horse as we mill about on the dirt track leading into the corral, awaiting Todd Nash. This area is currently empty of cattle, but you can tell it doesn’t stay that way. It’s 10am on a Friday morning, a fact the beating sun seems to have forgotten. College students are never still, but the group's steady din of morning moans and gripes is slowly quieted as, sure enough, a horse enters our periphery.

Todd Nash has just come from an early morning spent moving cattle. His calm demeanor and smile seem like contradictions; he’s taken time out of his ranching duties to meet with us, but Nash is also the Commissioner for Wallowa County, and the president of the Oregon Cattlemen's Association. He values making connections across the board, and works hard at those relationships. As a stakeholder and politician, Todd Nash is deeply intertwined in rural dynamics and land use.

Nash looks down from his chair, taking his eyes off the group for the first time. He reaches for the bunchgrass at his feet, using the land as his teaching aid. Our conversations range from wolves to rangeland, timber policy to grassland ecology. His passion for the art of ranching is the truest glimpse we get at his world before responsibilities drag both parties away from conversation. “There’s artistry in what we do out here, and I want you to see that.” This time, Nash rides away with his horse trailer on the back of his truck rather than on horseback.

By River Woodruff