August 8-18, 2026
Cowboy Meditations rides alongside Dick Gibford, a true working cowboy who still checks backcountry springs from the saddle of his good horse Buddy. Sun‑creased hands on the reins, long‑sleeved shirt, hat pulled low—Dick is the kind of man whose face tells the story before he ever speaks. It’s a story of seasons, solitude, horses, wild country, and a bond with the land that refuses to be rushed. He calls his way of life “naturally meditative,” and it shows. He’s as weather‑tested and honest as the country he rides.
Dick is also a cowboy poet, keeping alive a tradition born on the cattle trails of the late 1800s. His poems come straight from the life he leads—rawhide braiding, tending cattle, living simply and off the grid. Cowboys once passed long nights with verse, song, and tall tales, and Dick carries that torch with quiet pride.
The film also trails him to the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, where he’s stood before packed rooms and delivered poems rich with dust, wind, and lived experience.
Director Biography - Gary Richard Milliken
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Cowboy Meditations is Gary Milliken’s first film. He has done extensive R&D work developing dialysis machines, hard hat diving helmets, and automotive exhaust systems as well as working in the physics machine shop at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
He worked for the Buckminster Fuller Institute maintaining Fuller’s extensive personal archive. He has been backpacking in the California Sierra for over 40 years and has ridden his bicycle down the west coast as well as across the entire United States. He is an avid reader and has a BA from UCSB in Environmental Studies. His wife Gail, also a backpacker, worked for the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden for 35 years.