| What is your most memorable childhood experience? | My dad used to own a little house on top of a hill outside of town, surrounded by farms on all sides. He had a small office there, and so my brother and I often spent our days there growing up. My mom would also work occasionally in the office. Like typical kids we were always calling for our parents to “watch us do this!” Outside of the house was a huge tree, and one of my favorite things to do as a kid was climb trees. That tree in particular afforded an amazing view of the surrounding country, replete with farm animals, horses, silos, Civil War era barns, and so on. One day in the fall after the leaves had fallen I remember getting the courage to climb to the very top of the tree. After climbing what seemed like Mt. Everest, I finally made it to the top. Then I looked around! Believe me that I held on tight, but I called to my mom to see how high up I was. She came, and of course didn’t expect to see her 5-year-old forty feet in the air! My mom took a picture, and that picture of a little guy in the top of a tree is sitting in my office today. And despite the truism that our childhood memories of things are always out of proportion to reality, that tree really was very tall, and I am very much on the top of it! |
| What immediate family member do you closely identify with and why? | I most closely identify with my father because we have a strong connection over the outdoors. My dad used to be a park ranger, and he grew up half the time on the family farm, so he really knows his stuff. He often took me up to the park, and I really grew up hiking and being outdoors. Nowadays I go backpacking for days or weeks on end, just enjoying being in the pristine environment and experiencing the freedom of nature. I love to wake up to a sunrise, and to take pictures of sunsets. My dad and I share that appreciation for the grandness of nature. |
| What character traits do you admire in an individual? | I suppose the cliché response would be “honesty,” since everyone dislikes liars, but one of the traits that I most admire is orderliness. Of course I appreciate honesty, and trustworthiness, and kindness, and all the standard good character traits we aspire to. But I believe orderliness shows how much a person respects themselves. If you live in filth, or a disheveled mess, where your personal belongings and work are strewn about haphazardly, to me that reveals that you don’t actually care about these things, and to an extent you don’t respect them. I feel blessed to have my personal possessions and work to do, and when I have everything neat and in its own place, I feel like I do them justice. I am not obsessive compulsive, and I also let my apartment get a little messy once in a while, but that sense of pride and self respect I get when I put the place back into order is inspiring. |
| What is the funniest thing ever to happen to you? | I was once in a Middle Eastern city’s ancient quarter, a historical area thousands of years old, and happened to attend a large themed festival. The theme was of course about the history of that city, and so they had re-enactors walking throughout the city in costume, different actors set up in areas, various shows like knife jugglers and acrobats, and so on. It was pretty comprehensive – they even had drunks and homeless people straggling about, which revealed a lot about the lack of political correctness in some non-Western cultures. So, at one large plaza we found ourselves watching a show where a dwarf and a giant (a man on stilts) were performing magic tricks. Because I was taller than most people in the crowd, the dwarf magician called me on stage. They renamed me “Snuffy,” and performed a marriage ceremony between the giant and me, and then made me dance with him. I was so embarrassed because this was on stage in front of a hundred people, but my friends and I laughed about this for weeks. |
| If time and money were not an issue, where would you travel and why? | One of my biggest hobbies is to go backpacking. That entails a lot of different things, such as orienteering, survival skills, long distance hiking, climbing mountains, and all that good outdoors stuff. I’ve done a lot of backpacking in America, and I’ve been to the top of a few big mountains. But one of the meccas of backpacking is Argentina’s Patagonia wilderness. Most people only know about the Patagonia through the clothing line, but it is one of the last truly primitive areas of the world – a pristine wonderland. We’re talking huge snowy mountain ranges, breathtaking glaciers, and massive lakes. I could spend a few months backpacking down there. |
| When and if you ever have children, what would you like to pass on to them? | First of all, I very much hope to have children. So when I do, I want to pass on to them the thirst for knowledge that I have enjoyed so much in my life. When I arrived at college, I was so excited to finally chart my own course of studies. Though I enjoyed high school, and I had been challenged academically often, college provided the opportunity to choose what I wanted to focus my time on. I spent many long nights in the library studying dusty books just for the fun of it, and I can’t imagine not passing on the joy that I have gained in academic discovery to my children. |
