REDMOND — Glen Gray smiled as he drank his neon blue and red 7-Eleven Slurpee. The 59-year-old didn’t seem to mind the 96-degree heat blasting Redmond on a late summer day as he slurped, leaving a splatter of red ice on his salt and pepper beard.

“I always get them for my daughter and everybody,” Gray had said earlier, laughing and adding that he was more like a godfather to his partner’s daughter.

Despite a difficult life, Gray still smiles a lot while living in a remodeled travel trailer amidst the junipers and sage brush north of the Redmond Airport and

Highway 126. For Gray, it was a choice to move into the brush after his second wife died.

“I didn’t want to be alone,” he said.

His first wife died from a pulmonary embolism, he said, while the second succumbed to multiple myeloma — a type of cancer that forms in plasma cells.

“It’s been an interesting life since my last wife died,” Gray said. “There was no cure. I stayed with her until she died.”

Gray has had cancer as well and had an operation to remove his kidney. He currently uses a cane to walk and is preparing for another surgery. Gray’s future is almost as complicated as his past. He was homeless when he was younger and hopped trains, making it all the way to Florida then up to Minnesota and back to Oregon.

He spent six months in the Job Corps before going AWOL and wanted to join the Navy like his father, who served as an underwater welder, but struggled to pass the test and went into masonry instead. He eventually began operating front-end loaders until he retired.

Thirty-six years later, Gray said he lives on $1,300 a month from earnings he made as a front-end load operator and considers himself retired, not homeless.

“I consider myself as an individual,” he said. “People out here are considered homeless. You know, they don’t have a lot of food like I do, a lot of the accommodations that I do.”

A lifelong Central Oregonian, Gray said he just wants to enjoy his retirement but getting an apartment is difficult.

“I tried to get all my means lowered but sometimes it’s a little harder than it should be,” Gray said.

“Apartment (rent is) like sky high so I can’t move into an apartment because it’d eat my whole check up.”

Most landlords won’t consider renting to Gray because of a criminal history that dates back to 1986. Many charges have been dismissed but, according to Deschutes County Circuity Court records, he has been convicted of four felonies and nine class-A misdemeanors.

Although Gray won’t talk about what happened, he said that his relationship with his three daughters and two sons fell apart after his first wife died and he put them up for adoption. While he’s in contact with a couple of them, he’s not legally allowed to talk to the others.

“I’m a bad dad,” Gray said. “(I) placed them in voluntarily. They have better education, they’re in a different home.”

Gray has learned to live with his past and has family and a community among the junipers. After his second wife passed away from cancer, Gray’s sister — Jessica — had already been living in the junipers and asked him to join her.

“She kinda twisted my arm,” he said.

He lived in another travel trailer nearby, until people came through and tore it up for copper. He said not many of those who live in the junipers are like that. Instead, a lot of them are there for each other.

“People out here, they’re mellow,” he said, “they’re nice.”

He’s lived in his current spot for the last year in a renovated trailer donated by Central Oregon Veterans Outreach and lives near Jessica and her daughter along with Jessica’s boyfriend, Josh, and their neighbors Christy, Adrian, Shane and Michelle.

Every Friday, COVO drives along the bumpy and dusty road with a shower trailer that Gray is able to use, as well as bringing supplies like water tanks and propane.

He said he and his neighbors clean up the area all the time and that he’s been doing a little rockwork from camp to camp, finishing five different camps.

He built some rock walls to create a viewpoint and a barrier at the top of his hill.

“It’s a life out here,” he said.

Gray said he thought they’d likely be getting kicked out of the area soon but said that he doesn’t have any plans for when that might happen.

For the time being, however, Gray is trying his best to enjoy his retirement and neon-colored Slurpees as he prepares for his next surgery.

Who are the real people impacted by skyrocketing housing prices, decisions about homeless shelters or plans to sweep informal camps? The Bulletin wants to offer insight by telling their stories through the series Faces of Homelessness. Every two weeks this year, Bulletin reporters will introduce readers to a different homeless person. We are here to tell their stories.

For suggestions on how to help the region’s residents experiencing homelessness, contact the Homeless Leadership Coalition by email at info@cohomeless.org.