CURRENT MISSION

To understand

ABOUT ME

I'm just a guy from NC who likes walking around in the woods, climbing rocks, hiking up mountains, and hanging around in nature and with good people. Formally educated in biology and soon to be continuing that formal education, I'm an observer and a scientist and do my best to make sense of the world in whatever ways I know.

PHILOSOPHY

We are all individuals born into a strange world. Whatever laws govern our existence and whatever meaning there is in our lives we must ultimately determine and decide for ourselves. That's more or less what I'm working on.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Have couchsurfed on one cross country trip so far and hoping to do so on another. Also want to start hosting people in my future home in Salt Lake City once I get the whole housing thing down

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Couchsurfed in Wyoming en route to Seattle

Interests

Nature, hiking, climbing, biology (and most science), music and literature

• animals
• birds
• literature
• education
• wine
• running
• walking
• drinking
• flowers
• music
• cycling
• hiking
• rock climbing
• biology
• teaching
• science
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Too much to list and tend to change anyway, so here are some choice favorites of each, which more likely than not are probably not representative of my tastes:
Music - A Tribe Called Quest
Movie - The Seventh Seal
Book - The Idiot

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Still working on this one, but a month spent in Paris and a cross-country trip across the US both are in the running for most amazing things done so far in my lifetime

Teach, Learn, Share

Some nerdy stuff for whoever cares: Nutrient cycles are fascinating concepts, if only because they reinforce an idea that everything is part of a greater whole. For instance, you are made up in large part by the element carbon. When you die, much of your carbon will be directly ingested by other organisms (bugs and bacteria and such), where it will be assimilated into their cells and tissues to live and grow, or it will be released as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where it will hang around until it is likely taken up by plants and assimilated. These bugs and plants which incorporate your carbon into themselves then get eaten by other animals which then use some of your carbon to live and grow until they are eaten, and so on and so forth. The carbon cycle is in actuality much more complex than this, but it paints an interesting picture of our lives after (and before) death: we become the trees and the grass, the bugs and the birds, the flowers we smell, the bread we eat, the wine we drink, and every other part of life. In some sense, we are all which has come before and will one day become all which will come after. I just find that kinda cool, and I dig talking about science. And life.

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