Gary Milliken

Photo: Friday Harbor Film Festival

Cowboy Meditations is director/producer 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.

Cowboy Meditations won Best in Show at the 2026 Payson Western Heritage & Film Festival in Payson, Arizona.