Gary doesn’t remember who introduced him to Jack London but it was probably Mrs. Wyatt, the teacher in the one-room school he attended in the Texas panhandle. That early discovery of the fascinating allure of northern wilderness in stories like The Call of the Wild and To Build a Fire launched a quest he’s still on today.
Gary’s was a happy family, Dad, Mom and five kids. His mom took them swimming every day in the summer. His dad converted an old sheep trailer into a rustic popup camper and they went to the Black Hills of South Dakota several times.
Life was good, but Gary lived with an internal conflict: he was a preacher’s kid growing up in town who felt cheated because he didn’t live in the country. His favorite activity was time spent on a friend’s ranch or farm riding horses, working cattle, even doing chores, a quirk his rural friends were happy to oblige!
When he was ten, Gary’s family moved from the high plains of Texas to a rural county in northern Nebraska forty miles from the nearest traffic light (if you wanted to see two traffic lights, you had to drive a hundred miles). Here in the rolling hills of the Missouri River watershed, Gary developed a love for adventure in the great outdoors. With his .22 rifle at the ready, he roamed the snowy hills above the Niobrara River, swallowed in miles of virginal, silent emptiness. In his preteen mind this was wilderness.