Gil’s accolades — and reputation — loom to a ridiculous degree. He’s trekked through 75 countries, co-authored a book about finding Tibet’s fabled Hidden Falls, and taken the Bodhisattva vow of compassion from the Dalai Lama himself. He’s a certified yoga instructor, a black belt in Kenpo Karate and an explorer with a spiritual streak. The Arizona Trail Association will soon spotlight him in a documentary, and he’s been awarded the Hon Kachina, the state’s highest honor for volunteerism. But back at his house in the upper reaches of Scottsdale, he is a mortal man in the middle of a photo shoot. His wife Izuru — patient and perceptive — helps him select a cowboy hat, while Gil thinks about his past. That other life — the one where he structured limited partnerships that purchased, zoned and sold over 10,000 acres of Arizona land — is still part of his story. But everything shifted one fateful Thanksgiving, when Gil and his brother Troy loaded up a Jeep with supplies and headed to Mexico to deliver them to people in need. They took a wrong turn, missed their intended destination and ended up in Agua Prieta. What they saw there changed them forever. “There were kids wandering the streets, families living in homes made from wooden pallets. No plumbing. No electricity,” he said. “It shifted something inside me.” The jolt was an extension of his meditation practice. “When we silence the mind, the hard line between me and you gets blurred, and all of a sudden, you start seeing yourself in others,” he said. “No longer could I sit back and say, ‘Well, shoot, that’s their bad luck.’ I had to do something about it, because I was doing it for me .” Over the past four decades, Rancho Feliz has evolved from a borderland charity handing out food and supplies into something more revolutionary — one that replaces pity with purpose and handouts with human connection. Through its Vecinos Dignos (Worthy Neighbors) subdivision, families apply to earn their homes, quite literally. Under a rent-to-own agreement, the tenants make no-interest payments and donate volunteer hours, and their children are offered scholarships to attend bilingual schools. Gil calls this “reciprocal giving” — a loop in which both giver and receiver are empowered. No handouts or hierarchy, just a system that nurtures self-reliance and change. “Right now, I’ve got two families — two single mothers with six children, each with no money. And then I come in and say, ‘My organization, these beautiful donors and volunteers, are going to build you a three-bedroom home with a heating and cooling unit, electricity and water, where you can live with dignity.’ That’s 14 people whose lives we have changed forever,” he said. “That’s a joy that will not go away.” Gil is determined to share that joy, hosting over 27,000 volunteer visits, where volunteers work in soup kitchens, orphanages, animal shelters and community gardens, in addition to building homes. Rancho Feliz began a recycling program that has collected more than 20 million pieces of trash and recycled them to fund high school scholarships. In this pragmatic way, Rancho Feliz aims to make a dent in the border crisis. Providing people with opportunities, not welfare, allows them to live with dignity in their own country, eliminating the need to migrate illegally into the United States. Informed by his travels, Gil is horrified at the imbalance in our backyard. “I know of no other place with the disparity that we experience here in southern Arizona. You go from India to Pakistan, and it’s not a big deal. Here, you go from working for $14 or $15 an hour to $12 to $14 a day . Of course, you’re going to have people that want to go from one economic situation to another,” he said. Through Rancho Feliz, Gil sees a practical approach to addressing two prongs of poverty at once — the material 28 | FRONTDOORS MAGAZINE

Gillenwater makes time to meditate each day. ‘Meditation changes people,’ he said. ‘It changes the way we think and relate to our world.’ He is shown here in his home studio holding a river-worn rock that kept him grounded during a Class 5 rafting expedition in Tibet. FRONTDOORS MAGAZINE | 29 Meditation photos by Scott Foust