I was the type of student who do average or better without much work, and that’s exactly what I did. (Laughter). I wasn’t interested much in academics. When I was fifteen I got my first motorcycle and started racing motor cross, and that’s all I cared about.

I did go out for the football team in my sophomore year, but it was a series of challenges that didn’t fit my needs. The idea of running and throwing yourself through the air and landing on your stomach seemed crazy to me when I could be out doing the same thing on my motorcycle. So football didn’t last long.

I did work out with the gymnastics team, which was a brand new thing. We were supposed to compete, but the funding was cut so it turned into a physical education class.

Other things I remember are a science teacher who looked like a student. She had braces, and her name was Diane Werner. I was doing poorly in biology but she gave me the support I needed to get my act together.

I remember not much else from high school in terms of specific teachers or individuals or anything like that. I have one brother who is seventeen months older than I am. He still lives in Florida, and he works as an engineer for Boeing. He’s a space scientist, a true rocket scientist.

This year he came down here, to Todos Santos, with his middle son. He was also down here three years ago, which is when we scattered pop in the ocean.

My brother has four kids; he is in the middle of a divorce. He lives in Cocoa Beach Florida, and is a real good guy.

Our parents died within about six months of each other. For us that whole time was positive, not negative. Sometimes people worry about who gets what and that sort of thing, but not us. This made us closer. We spent a lot of time together.

Because my father was the chief mechanical inspector for the city of Tampa, my dad was able to find jobs for me every summer. I usually worked as an air conditioning technician because that’s who he oversaw. Starting when I was about fifteen, I worked full-time in the summers for various air conditioning companies.

When I got out of high school I got a job with one of those companies and work with them for a year or so. I quickly realize that crawling around in 150° attics covered with insulation, in the middle of Florida summers, was not such a cool job.

So after that night decided to try school again. I went to community college off and on in Tampa for about a year. Then my father moved back to the farm in Virginia where he grew up. That’s when he turned 55, which is about when I got out of high school.

I called him one day and asked him if he needed any help or company and he told me to come on up to Virginia. Before this point we had only spend weekends and a week or two in the summer together. So I moved up with him onto the farm.

I started going to night school in Roanoke, which was about a 45 minute drive from rocky mountain Virginia, where our farm was located. I got a job working for a plumber.

Then I got freaked out about being so far away from Florida so I packed up and went back there. I stayed there for a little while then had second thoughts and headed back to Virginia. This time I stayed for about five years.

I went to Virginia Western Community College at night. At that school I met some friends who got me involved in skiing, backpacking, rock climbing, mountain biking. I finally got rid of my last dirt bike.

Working as a plumber for those few years it struck me that there weren't too many beautiful women running around. It was good work but it wasn’t going in any particular direction, so I made one last stab at college.

There was a private college, Ferrum College, located about a half an hour from where the farm was. It’s in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and has a really beautiful campus that’s in the middle of nowhere.

I had some good professors who led me in wonderful directions. The next thing I knew I was getting A’s in chemistry and biology, and was the number one student. These professors helped me realize that I could excel in things if I only worked at them.

I can say that I ever used my college education specifically, but I sure used a lot of what transpired on that campus. You learn how to think, you learn how to learn, you learn that you can do more than you ever realized.

Going to a small school I knew every professor, I knew their wives I knew their dogs, the car they drove, where they lived. They used to come to our farm. My father and I built a big deck out over the creek over a small river that ran around the farm.

We used to have massive keg parties out on the deck. At any given time would have 500 people out there on the deck. On occasion our house would be party central!

My dad was a dreamer. He was incredible about throwing out ideas and saying: “let’s do it! We can do that!” He would come up with something, think about it, figure out a way, and just get it done.

So I got my degree in environmental studies, with the second major in agriculture. At that time I thought I wanted to do something with environmentally friendly farming. I never did anything with it, but it’s what I thought I wanted to do.

At the same time we had a small scale cattle operation on the farm. We were gentlemen ranchers as my father liked to say. He would leave for the winter and drive to Florida and leave me there to feed the cows. I tried but I wasn’t destined to be a cowboy. I tried hard: boots, hats, chewing tobacco, ropes… it just didn’t quite make it.

I graduated from school in Virginia that the summer before I graduated my buddy and I jumped in my VW microbus. We drove out west for six weeks climbing, hiking, backpacking, skiing, and generally having any wonderful time tour in the west.

We happened to go through the town of Missoula, Montana. We were taking the blue highways, wandering the small roads coming back from the Pacific coast.

I saw a sign for the University of Montana, and I realize that someone I had gone to school with in Virginia had transferred here. His name was Milo Bercham, and how many people with that name can there be?

So I called the university and got his name and number and called him at his dorm room. We got together and hung out for a few days. During that time he painted a beautiful picture of the place. It was absolutely gorgeous. We came in through Washington, Idaho, and Montana and saw the Locksaw River, which is a world class Whitewater River. There are a series of hot springs. I remember writing on the map: really cool place!

And all this was even before we got to Missoula. When we arrived in Missoula it was a sunny, clear, beautiful day, the Rivers were raging. I looked around and said to myself: “I’m going to move here!”

I went up to the university and they had all kinds of masters programs that seemed applicable to what I might do. I went back and told my girlfriend that we were moving to Boulder, Colorado we were moving to Missoula, Montana. And she said OK.

The next year we did move.

I tried the environmental studies program, but I had a degree in environmental science, which is different. This was a very advocacy-oriented program, and I was a science person. So I took a few classes and realized that this wasn’t going to work for me.

So I transferred into a Master of Science course work program. As part of this program you had to teach and the public schools for two years, which I never did. So I never really finished my master’s degree.

To have a master’s in education, you ought to be a teacher. More typically, you would commit that from the point of view of being a teacher who wanted to expand. That made it hard to get a job. With master’s level coursework, they had to pay you more, but you don’t have any experience. So you’re competing against people with experience. It put me in a bad situation in terms of hirability.