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.
As he grew older, Gary dreamed of a mountain man life, as captured in the Robert Redford movie, Jeremiah Johnson, wild, free and miles from civilization. But when Gary was 13, God had called him to a missionary career, so what to do with the adventure?
What happened one day in college
He enrolled in Moody Bible Institute to prepare for missions, dreaming of wilderness all the while. A critical turning point came when a Moody friend made a simple but compelling observation: “It’s hard to have a ministry if there’s no people around!”
The logic was irrefutable, and Gary’s commitment to that divine calling held. He put the wilderness dream on the shelf and trained for a future of evangelism and church-planting.
He married his high school sweetheart and they went to Texas, considering their options, waiting for more specific direction. He saw a riveting National Geographic cover: mounted cowboys pushing cattle, the rising vapor of breath from man and beast in the frosty air, snow-capped peaks in the distance. He enrolled in an animal sciences program at Texas A&M University with the goal of qualifying for a ranch manager job someplace in the mountains. This would be the means by which he would fund that missionary career.
A turning point came one day as he sat up high near the back of a theater classroom listening as fellow freshmen settled in for chemistry class. He heard his peers talking about their goals. They wanted to graduate, get a good-paying job and make lots of money. Naturally. But in that moment, he realized he did not belong there. He had a calling. He needed to finish his ministry training and find the place Jesus wanted to send him. After that semester they moved to Omaha so he could finish Bible school.
Wilderness at last
Then, one magic day in his last year of Bible college, the calling and the dream came together. In a chapel service, a missionary appealed for recruits in the north. Gary came home to his bride with news that changed their life together: missionaries were needed in rural communities in the north!
Two years later, they set out from Nebraska for the 2000 mile trip to Williams Lake, British Columbia. Gary pulled their 12×50 foot mobile home, Valerie drove the escort car. They arrived safely. They became missionaries in the Chilcotin region of British Columbia, Canada. Parked that trailer a mile above the mighty Fraser River, a sort of Niobrara on steroids. Their new abode lay eight miles beyond the closest electricity and their nearest neighbors, the First Nations community to which they had been assigned.
This was wilderness cattle country; four vast ranches controlled two million acres. The couple who owned and managed one of these operations—Empire Valley Ranch—became good friends. Empire comprised 350,000 acres that extended from the Fraser seventy-five miles west into the high meadow country of the Coast Mountains. Plenty of grass in summer and hay in winter to support 1500 head of cattle. Habitat for bighorn sheep, moose, cougars, wolves, black bears and grizzlies.
This magnificent mountain ranch would become the setting of Someplace North, Someplace Wild. But the story would remain untold for 40+ years.
More living, more writing
Gary was writing articles for publication, and grew curious about authoring a book. But life intervened. Twelve years of missionary service in four Canadian provinces. Two children. A master’s degree from Wheaton College. A move to Oregon. Fifteen years as executive director of a missionary-sending organization. Grandchildren. Twelve years as a blog manager and editor. Seminary studies and twelve years as a local-church pastor.
Those life chapters included plenty of adventure: a dozen ten-thousand mile trips to Siberia; learning how to start a car at fifty below zero; waking at night to an almost tangible presence of evil in the room, a messenger of Satan to intimidate their gospel ministry in the village; being abandoned by his guide at a tiny airport in the Russian Far East with a small mountain of luggage and no interpreter; a fire that destroyed their household generator and cut off phone service to an entire community.
Gary’s first crack at a book came from Tom, the friend who had owned Empire Valley Ranch. He asked Gary to help him write a book from his top-rated posts at a ranching blog, a project that got shelved when Tom died unexpectedly a couple of months later. The book lay dormant for several years, but Gary finally resumed the work, prepared the material and found a publisher. Mountain Ranch at the End of the Road: Horses, Cows, Guns and Grizzlies in the Canadian Wilderness is available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon and other online bookstores.
A story takes shape
In all of that, God was leading Gary to another turning point in his writing journey. His bride saw an email for a novel-writing class and encouraged him to pursue it. “If you don’t do this now, when will you?”
They didn’t have a thousand dollars lying around, and he certainly did not have the six hours each week of discretionary time. But his wife’s encouragement replayed in his head until he agreed: it was past time to begin. He spent hours in the training course and started the writing as he continued the learning. Finally he began to shop the manuscript and collect the inevitable “Sorry, we can’t use your book” letters. More learning, more rewriting.
All this in early mornings, an occasional free evening, while still employed, both as editor and pastor; then retiring from the editor job and pastoring only.
Steadily, these life experiences congealed into one compelling question that framed the story he would write. What if a young cowboy—resourceful, honest but impulsive—left Texas for Canada to pursue his dream of punching cattle in the wild, got a job on a remote mountain ranch, met a beautiful girl, all the while overcoming impossible odds, then out of the blue got arrested and deported because he’d been framed for murder? And not only framed, the county attorney is crooked and he can’t trust the system. What would he do?
Dread diagnosis
As the energy to finish this novel was building, the darkest moment arrived: aggressive cancer of the prostate, markers at six times the maximum safe threshold. At 66, Gary was already late starting his novel; what now? Would he even be able to finish the narrative, never mind the marketing to see it succeed? After walking through a brief mist of fear, he remembered that a loving heavenly Father makes no mistakes. When an overwhelming problem confronts us, we must remember Who is in control.
Then he recalled a fable that captured this moment in his life.
A man who lived in a village had been gifted with a horse that was his delight, an animal of value he could never afford. But one morning the horse was missing. “My horse ran away, God? How could you let that happen?”
He grieved for several days, and then was astonished one morning: in the night the horse had returned with ten other horses! He was wealthy! “Thank you, God. Thank you that my horse ran away because look how blessed I am now!”
But another bad turn of events followed. His son set out to break one of these horses to ride when the horse kicked him and broke his leg. “Oh, God, my son’s leg is broken? How could this be? I thought I was blessed but now I feel cursed. He cannot help me. What will I do?”
But a few days later a gang of thieves came through the villages, forcing the young men to join them. They came for this man’s son, but when they saw his leg was broken, they left him. “Thank you, God, thank you!” the man prayed. “Thank you that my son will be safe with me. Thank you that he broke his leg. Thank you that my horse ran away!”
Whom shall I fear?
Gary had shared that story in conversation and even from the pulpit to encourage others to recognize that no beloved child of God need ever fear or become anxious about anything He might bring into their lives. When something bad happens, we should say, “Ah, Lord, my horse ran away! Now what?”
He recalled that, as he pondered the cancer, and he sensed that maybe God was saying, “Okay, Gary, you like to talk about faith. You like to preach it. Let’s see how you live it!”
Put like that, it brought a laugh. So he had cancer? What was the worst that could happen? He’d get promoted to glory early! His wife and family would miss him, but they would survive and carry on. And who knows what he might discover along the way?
From that moment, the cancer has never been an issue for him. He got back into his writing, working to get his first novel published and framing the sequel.
Gary’s world
Gary is proud to be a tenth-generation American who loves Jesus, loves his bride, and strongly embraces traditional marriage and family values. He’s not afraid to capitalize on nostalgia for the late 20th century values and experiences of his own generation.
Gary writes for readers who believe justice ultimately prevails. They affirm the image of God in man, the inestimable value of a single human life, the power of marriage, the value of family, the role of the church, the blessing of public and private virtue, personal responsibility, a strong work ethic, freedom, the rule of law, the rights enshrined in our constitution, the knowledge of God, reverence for the Bible, and the confession of Christ in the public square.
Gary’s family and friends admire his spontaneity, but it does get him in scrapes. They also appreciate his positive attitude, robust work ethic, love for grandchildren, devotion to Jesus and ability to lead. His stimulating personality inspires confidence even in others. He’s an extrovert who loves writing in his quiet study and gets restless without some physical activity. In the cold months you can find him bucking, stacking, splitting and burning firewood. Summer is for kayaking and camping with family in the Cascades, or flying his stunt kite at the Oregon coast.
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