The Ever Affable Gary

Gary and his son, Seth, living life to its fullest.

My good friend, Gary, is struggling with his battle with cancer. As I type he is in a veterans hospital in Honolulu receiving radiation therapy for a cancer that can no longer be extracted. I don’t know his current status, but I know it is serious.

Yesterday, driving home from a weeklong river trip, I choked up thinking about him as I listened, and tried to sing - though it was difficult through the catches in my throat - to Cat Stevens’ Miles From Nowhere. The song seems particularly fitting to Gary’s nature and events of the moment.

Miles from nowhere, guess I’ll take my time, oh, yeah, to reach there

Gary had a good relationship with time. He never allowed it to control him. And it never mattered where he was - even if it was miles from anywhere - because he could always carve a home out of the relationships he welcomed and built.

Look up at the mountain, I have to climb, oh yeah, to reach there
Lord, my body has been a good friend but I won’t need it when I reach the end
Miles from nowhere, guess I’ll take my time, oh yeah, to reach there

Gary had struggles, mountains to overcome, precipitous trails to ascend, I’m sure. Who doesn’t? But not always having it easy didn’t embitter him. You could see in his love of his son, his life, his adopted state of Hawaii that, on the whole, he focused on the donut and not the hole. A smiling picture of him standing armpit deep in floodwaters tells it all.

I creep through the valleys and I grope through the woods
’Cause I know when I find it my honey, it’s gonna make me feel good, yes
I love everything, so don’t it make you feel sad
’Cause I’ll drink to you, my baby, I’ll think to that, I’ll think to that

He found what he was looking for in Hawaii. He lived it through his son, Seth, and through the people he came to know and love him. That was the case both in Hawaii and on the mainland. Even now, facing a relentless internal enemy and difficult odds, I see through his social media feed he continues to empathize and speak up for others.

Miles from nowhere, not a soul in sight
Oh yeah, but it’s alright, I have my freedom
I can make my own rules, oh yeah, the ones that I choose

At the moment, to my knowledge, Gary’s not surrounded by the family he created for himself over the last six decades because of his being off the mainland and being hospitalized in the midst of a pandemic. But he knows his lifelong community is there in spirit and admiration and awe at how well he has lived his principles. How he has lived so faithfully to the construct of the day-to-day reality he chose.

He used to talk about the town of Mulege on the Baja peninsula as a place he could envision himself ghosting away to when the time came to retreat from ‘syphilization’. I don’t know what his fascination with Mulege was but he was the sort of gringo who could insinuate themselves into a strange community far outside his normal milieu and within a short period of time he would become a father figure to urchins and a person laborers might turn to for advice or a good belly laugh.

Instead he chose Hawaii because that was where his son lived. As always, he lived freely by his own chosen rules. And, for all I know, became a sage and a source of Dude-like wisdom for the locals.

Mahalo, my friend.

Lord, my body has been a good friend, but I won’t need it when I reach the end

I love everything, so don’t it make you feel sad
’Cause I’ll drink to you, my baby, I’ll think to that, I’ll think to that

Miles from nowhere, guess I’ll take my time
Oh yeah, to reach there

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I wrote this piece about Gary in April of 2019.

Year One of Orion we might have rafted 100 people between July 4th and whenever we mothballed our boats at the end of the season.

In Year Two we took ten times that many guests on the Skagit, Suiattle and Wenatchee Rivers and there were a couple of trips we were forced to ‘dig deep’ for guides beyond the five original partners. I mean, when you resort to a mountain climber, a park ranger, the wife of one of the partners and the Dean of Leisure Studies at WWU to fill out your guide roster, it was clear the time had come to recruit and train up some guides.

Consequently, in Year Three, we requested space at Western’s job fair, I donned my most corporate attire and interviewed prospective employees. Our objective was to settle on - at least - five worthy folks who we figured would make exceptional guides.

Gary Renspurger was one of these select interviewees.

Frankly, I was in awe of him. He was my senior, he was once a survival specialist and instructor for the military and he had a countenance and demeanor that could easily silence any blowhard. And yet, his affability and gregariousness stood out over all and it is what made him a legendary figure in the Orion universe.

Even back then, the top of his head was as smooth and shiny as a bowling ball, just as it is now. In addition, he sported a voluminous beard that rivaled all of the great beards of history from the abolitionist, John Brown, to the lead singer of ZZ Top, just as he wears it now. His eyes would twinkle when he smiled or laughed, which I remember him doing often.

I don’t know how many shots Gary took at running Boulder Drop Rapid on the Skykomish during his active guiding days - which were all before the advent of self-bailers - but I know during two of those attempts he cleared his raft of guests at House Rock but he managed to stay in the guide seat. In each episode, caught on film, his bear-like girth belies his mountain goat agility to remain on a sideways vertical raft in the midst of whitewater chaos.

I guess he had not been lying about his survival skills.

Last fall, Gary joined me for a river trip on the Green and Colorado Rivers in Utah. It was a pleasure to be boating with him again because of his calm disposition, generous nature and ‘no-fucks-left-to-give’ attitude. He lives some portion of his life in Hawaii these days and, if anyone was ever suited to the “aloha” culture, it would be Gary. He has always been the master of balancing responsibilities with independence and freedom and leisure.

It had been a few years, or decades, since he had last boated, so I made sure to give him the biggest oar boat available. I envisioned this would be to his advantage in the towering waves and whitewater of Cataract Canyon. If I had known Cataract Canyon was experiencing historically low water levels, I might have reconsidered that decision. As it turned out, the larger oar boat was a greater challenge in the narrow, boulder-choked channels.

But, like the rafting Houdini he had always proven to be, he snaked his raft through with only one breath-taking moment and without any serious mishap.

Gary’s son, Seth, was the first of a growing crowd of Orion offspring. He did not follow his father’s footsteps in becoming a commercial river guide, but in all other aspects, he appears to have learned a great deal from his father about living the good life without selling your soul.

I have snapshots of Gary getting intimate with his raft and the immovable object known as House Rock, but, in my mind, what I remember from his guiding days was him teaching me the joys of throwing horse shoes on the white sand beaches of the Lower Salmon, the pleasure he and Josh Adler took in mud baths on Desolation Grey Canyon, his messianic fervor - short-lived - over an instant food product called Royal American he convinced me to support on a Grand Canyon trip, his ability to tell a great story and his general imperturbability.

That imperturbability might have been the mushrooms but I’d like to think it was because, long before he ever reached the shores of Kauai, he already embodied the spirit of ‘aloha’.

Look it up. ‘Cause that’s Gary.