Drilling for drama: Oceanside geologist recalls time spent in Colombian jungle

By: RUTH MARVIN WEBSTER - Staff Writer | Saturday, January 5, 2008 8:03 PM PST ∞

In writing circles, new authors are often encouraged to write about what they know.

And with his first novel, "Drilling for Disaster in the Colombian Jungle," ($19.95, Publish America, www.publishamerica.com), Oceanside resident Don McGee has wisely heeded that sound piece of advice.

Drawing on his experiences as a geologist in the Colombian jungle, McGee has constructed what he calls an adventure-mystery about a young man named Darcy.

"This stuff actually happened to me, but the book is fictionalized," he said, adding that he took care to change the names. But most of the characters and events are based on real ones, he said ---- including the death threats, alligator hunting, unreliable methods of transportation and communication, and bandits.

All quite closely resemble the way it really happened, McGee said, except that Darcy, McGee's main character, is much more outgoing and daring than he is.

Raised in San Carlos in Northern California, McGee graduated from UCLA with a degree in geology in 1957. From there, he went on to work for an American consulting company which sent him to Colombia to do preliminary soil and rock studies before the subsequent oil wells were built, he said.

Ever since he worked in Colombia all those years ago, McGee said he knew he wanted to write about the experience. "It was a fascinating life for me as a young man," he said, adding that the area of Medellin where he was sent, is about 5,000 feet in elevation and known as the city of eternal spring. "You were on full pay whether or not you touched a rock and five of us guys leased a finca (farmhouse) with two maids for a whopping $60 a month. We had guest passes to the local golf courses and to the Club Union, a country club for the very wealthy."

And in Medellin, Colombia's second largest city after Bogata, McGee also met and fell in love with his wife, Ines, to whom he has now been married for 48 years.

"I met her at a fiesta about a month after I got there, but we didn't speak the same language," he said of their first meeting in which he remembers Ines as vivacious and fun-loving. "We went together for about a year, and then I had to go to work in Venezuela for three months. She said she thought I'd forget about her. But I didn't."

After doing two separate stints for a few years as a consultant for an American oil company in Colombia where he married Ines, the couple returned to Southern California where they raised their two children: daughter Jackie, who is an escrow officer in Torrance, and son Jim, who is married and works for Xerox in Cerritos. "The kids would get sick, and we were used to the conveniences here," McGee said. "You can't have a normal family life there."

So they moved to the Torrance area, where McGee quickly got his teaching credential. He began working as a science and Spanish teacher at Narbonne High School, where he taught for years before his retirement in 1991.

Moving to the Ocean Hills community in Oceanside five years ago, McGee said he tried again to write his novel, but the writing group he first joined conflicted with his golf game and the adult education class in Vista he registered for did not have enough students to hold the class.

Nonetheless, he was able to work with the writing professor who suggested he revise the manuscript to make it more approachable to readers who did not have the first idea about process of oil drilling and production.

"The teacher asked me who my target audience was," he said. "I was taking a lot for granted. I started out with 80,000 words, and it's much less now. I like a novel that you actually learn something from, but now, it is easier to understand. I don't want to write a boring book, so I tried to write shorter sentences and write to the point."

McGee said he thinks writing is fun, though he admitted it can be frustrating occasionally "when you're looking for a word and can't find it."

He has started a second novel that also tells the story of another geologist in Colombia. And the couple are planning a trip back to Columbia this year, partly for research purposes.

"I need to go back for the sights and the sounds, and to see how it has changed," he said, adding that "now so many of these countries are drilling themselves" rather than having American consulting firms come in to drill.

Contact staff writer Ruth Marvin Webster at (760) 740-3527 or rwebster@nctimes.com.