1 My Story

I came to geology not through a love of rocks but through a desire to travel. However, that travel led to drinking unclean water (a great weightloss method) and a resulting decision to study water resources. Geology proved a route that combined my studies with my love of travel.

In middle school, the worse course I had (then or ever) was earth science. After that, I wanted nothing more to do with geology. However, my college offered a chance to travel—a geology fieldtrip backpacking and camping out west. So the summer after my freshman year of college, at a time when I was an English major, our class visited Yellowstone, the Tetons, the Badlands, and Dinosaur National Monument, hiked tens of miles, camped every night, and journaled daily—I loved it all. Geoloy wasn’t so bad after all.

But during the next fall, my sophomore year, my father was diagnosed with leukemia, dying at the beginning of spring semester. The English professor I admired most didn’t know how to deal with my emotional vulnerability and pushed me away. I was a mess and switched my major to math, something I was good at and that required no emotional energy nor vulnerability. At the same time, I started taking some geology courses, the equivalent of a minor, though never formally recognized. But they were enough to get me into grad school in geology after two years teaching math in Africa.

My two years in Africa were in most ways wonderful—except healthwise. Besides a bout of malaria, I had a lung infection and multiple bouts of explosive diarrhea and vomiting. I well remember sitting on the toilet with a bucket in my hands. In particular, during the spring of my last year, the seasonal rains failed. The reservoir providing water for the town dried up, and the water supply was intermittent. At the same time, I often frequented a shop in town that served a wonderful curry soup and samosas—triangular, deep-fried, meat pies. Delicious. The shop was a bit of a greasy spoon, and after the rains failed, the spoons became particularly greasy. I picked up something that ripped through my system, screaming “Oh, shit!” the entire way.

When I returned from Africa, I was about 40 pounds lighter than I am today, gaunt to the point of emaciation. I decided clean water was important. And that led me to grad school.

Grad School in Wyoming

I ended up in grad school in geology at the University of Wyoming seemingly by a chance encounter. My Kenyan school had a three-month-on/one-month off schedule, and during my time off, I travelled—gameparks with rhinos, elephants, and lions, and the lakes of the Rift Valley—Naivasha, Nukuru, Begoria, Turkana, and Baringo. At the latter, a 45-minute boat ride took me to Island Camp, where thatched-roof buildings, a swimming pool and bar, and tent accom-modations awaited. It was one of the few places I visited more than once.

During my second year in Kenya, I decided that I would study water resources when I returned to the U.S. I had decided clean water is important. Duh! While visiting Island Camp, I went for a stroll. An old couple sat in front of their tent looking at the lake. I chatted for perhaps 20 minutes, but that brief encounter shaped all that came afterward.

The old guy was Don Blackstone, a retired and emeritus geology professor from the University of Wyoming, vacationing in Kenya. I told him what I was interested in, and he replied, “Why don’t you consider coming to Wyoming?”

At the time, geology was one of the hottest fields for employment in the world, driven by sky-high oil prices. When I applied, I was unaware that I was among 800 applicants for perhaps 30 slots. If I’d known, I might have been intimidated. But unlike many geologists, I am good at math, plus I wasn’t trying for one of the oil-related positions. Thus, I stood out enough to get accepted. When I returned home from Kenya, I got in my old wrecked-and-rebuilt Ford Pinto, my first and only car to that point, and drove more than 1600 miles to Laramie, Wyoming, to start graduate school.

In grad school, your most important relationship is with your adviser. I had applied from Africa in the days before the internet, so I knew little about my adviser except for his name, Peter Huntoon. However, I took a class with him that first semester, and he soon took us on an overnight field trip to northern Wyoming. By then it was late September, and it snowed a foot. My hiking boots were still coming back from Africa, so I bought some lined cowboy books with high-traction soles. They performed well enough but fit terribly, eating through my socks and into my heels, as I and the other students hurried and failed to keep up with Huntoon’s hiking to spots he wanted to show us.

On our return drive, we stopped in at the Thermopolis Hot Springs. Soaking in the 105-degree water was a blessed relief. However, I found no relief for my seeming inability to please Dr. Huntoon. I got a bit of insight on a later field trip when he said, “I believe in making a student as insecure as possible. That’s when they do their best work.” I didn’t need any help being insecure, thank you. As to students doing their best work, I couldn’t see that it was being done for Huntoon—of the three students who began working with him when I did, one dropped out of school, and the other two changed advisers.

During that first fall, I took a class in mathematical geology because the course I wanted to take didn’t fit in my schedule. I did very well in the course, and the professor, Leon Borgman, needed someone to work on a project for the Environmental Protection Agency. He decided to fund me, and that summer, I changed advisers.

Dr. Borgman’s approach to working with students was quite different from Huntoon’s. Borgman had trained national-level obe-dience dogs, and he once said to me, “Working with graduate students is a lot like working with dogs—you don’t start kicking them before they know what to do.” Personally, I was like the dog who responded to a pat on his head with a hump on your leg. Anyway, I thrived under his more gentle approach, and in return he was able to turn over to me much of the project work that he didn’t enjoy, such as writing quarterly reports. I even got to write a proposal for continued funding, a great experience for my future career. I ended up staying on for another four years and completing my Ph.D. under Borgman’s direction.

I tell my students about the importance of developing closeness with a few of their professors. “You’ll need some letters of recom-mendation someday. And when internships or other opportunities come up, we tend to think first of the students we know best.” But these relatively self-serving justifications are really just an attempt to open a door. Friendships are sufficient in and of themselves.

During the spring after I started working for Dr. Borgman, he took me along on a trip to Las Vegas, the location of the EPA lab supporting our research. Las Vegas might seem a strange place for an EPA office, but it’s the closest city to the Nuclear Test Site, where weapons were exploded and observed after World War II. Water is the limiting resource in that part of the world, so funding research on groundwater fit with the office’s mission. During that trip, I met Dr. Dennis Weber, who worked at a research lab associated with the University of Nevada–Las Vegas. The following summer, Dennis opened his home to me as a free place to stay while working with the EPA. For six weeks, Dennis and I spent most of 24 hours per day together, working on research, eating out at the casinos, hiking, and talking in the nearby dough-nut shop. He took me in once again two summers later when I returned to Las Vegas on another project with the EPA. And i just got an email from him a few days ago.

When I finally got close to finishing up at the University of Wyoming, I first needed to form a Ph.D. dissertation committee of five or so professors or experts in the area of research, a committee including Huntoon, Borgman, and Dennis. Another of my committee members was Peter Shive, a geophysicist and Stanford Ph.D. who worked on an associated project funded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. During my time in Wyoming, Peter met his present, wonderful wife, Gail, an artist and avid bicyclist. (I wrote an article about her [here].) And they, too, became friends I’ve stayed in touch with since.

I’ve long since returned to Wyoming with my own daughters. Each spent ten days at a wilderness program that included a first repel off the billion-year-old Sherman Granite that I had repelled off 35 years before, except they did it in the dark. They got to see snowfields in July, as they hiked through the towering Rocky Mountains, including the appropriately name Snowy Range. And hopefully, they have grown to love the natural world as they’ve hiked through it, run over it, and driven and flown by it.

New Orleans

During my last year at the University of Wyoming, one of my fellow graduate students walked into my office with a professional journal advertising academic jobs. (This was before everything was on the internet.)

“Did you see this job at the University of New Orleans?” he asked.

“No,” I replied. “Let me take a look.”

At that point, I was just beginning to think seriously about what came next. The job was for a hydrogeologist, someone who works with groundwater, my area of interest. So I applied, got an interview, and got the job. During the interview, I joked, “I wanted to work in the Third World, and New Orleans was as close as I could get in the U.S.” Fortunately, the old professor I was speaking with took it as a joke and laughed.

At that time, New Orleans had the highest per capita murder rate in the U.S. But it also had great music, great restaurants, and festivals nearly every weekend—always something for a 29-year-old bachelor to do., though I was woefully ignorant of nearly everything cultural. One of the more experienced professors, Bill Ward, had headed the search committee that hired me, and Bill had a son about my age. Bill became my mentor, guiding me through the academic world that was mostly a mystery to me. For example, during New Faculty Orientation, I was introduced to the Provost of the university. I had no idea what a Provost was, and I probably didn’t act adequately impressed. The Provost was my Big Boss, the top guy for day-to-day operations of the university. Fortunately, Bill educated me. For the first four years, he, I, and a couple more of the old times ate lunch together daily, and listening to their daily chatter was better than four years in classes. And after my fifth year, Bill was my Best Man when I got married.

After my time in Africa, I had chosen to live as simply as possible. I drove an old truck with no AC, no radio, and doghair on the seat, and I lived my first three years in New Orleans without air-conditioning. I drilled hooks into the rafters and hung a couple of hammocks, plus stuck a fan in the window for especially hot days. Admittedly, I didn’t get many dates in the summer.

For a certain group of people, such a lifestyle is attractive. Thank goodness. One of my students set me up on a blind date with a zookeeper. I took her out for coffee, not wanting to spend too much on a first date. My date, Jamie, now my wife, and I closed the shop down and then went out for a beer. A couple of months later we were engaged, and the following August, we left for a year in the Middle East.

Qatar is one of the richest countries in the world. I didn’t get into water resources to help the wealthy—I wanted to work in poor countries. After Jamie and I returned from Qatar, I began looking for a chance to get involved with organizations aiding the poor, and I attended a conference for Water for Life, an organization that sent simple drilling rigs to poor countries and then trained locals how to use them. While at the conference, I learned of an upcoming trip to Haiti, and I signed up.

The flight to Haiti left out of West Palm Beach on an old DC-3, a World War II-era riveted plane with a small tailwheel that made entering the cabin a bit like climbing a hill. Because of all we were transporting, it had to stop at a small Bahamian island to refuel. Not the latest technology, but the kitchen cabinets of the house I grew up in were made from the floorboards of DC-3s, boards scavenged by my dad from the airport where he worked. I knew DC-3s well, and I knew them to be workhorses that were hard to knock out of the air, much less fall out on their own.

Shortly before I was to leave for West Palm Beach, Jamie and I had our first miscarriage. I was later to learn that quite a few people had similar experiences, but at the time it was overwhelming and lonely. We decided for Jamie to come with me as far as West Palm Beach and stay with her parents until I returned. Her parents are generous, warm, and welcoming, and I knew Jamie would be cared for. What I didn’t know was that while in Haiti I would get a tour of a medical clinic with posters on the wall of a developing fetus. We had been so happy over the Christmas holidays when we announced to our families that a baby was on its way.

After one more miscarriage and a second trip to Haiti, we had two wonderful, healthy daughters. And I took a few years off from traveling, volunteering locally in New Orleans at a GED program, teaching math and science, mostly to middle-aged African-American women.

My time in Haiti working on water wells had been eye-opening. I saw lots of projects in a state of disrepair, lots of cases where intentions were good but the improvements didn’t last. The head of the GED program gave me an article that had appeared in one of her magazines about a model sustainable development program that a priest had helped start in Fondwa, Haiti. I went to visit and, subsequently, took students to Haiti to study sustainable development.

A couple of weeks before my last trip to Haiti, the Provost of the university canceled my course. He didn’t ask me about it, call me, email me, or contact me in any way. By that time, I was serving on a non-profit organization working in Haiti, had developed many local contacts, and already spent about $10,000 on tickets for the upcoming trip. Fortunately, my department chairman let me switch the students to independent-study credits, and we went anyway.

When I returned, I went to see the Provost. He made the excuse that any course going outside the U.S. had to follow a certain procedure, going through what was called Metro College at UNO. (One of my colleagues had been allowed to go with students to Mexico that same summer, but maybe the Provost meant North America. Huh.) So I jumped through the new set of hoops for a few months, got all more paperwork done, and went back to see the Provost. His not-new response? “I can’t let you go.” He was scared of the potential liability with Haiti. I would have appreciated a bit of honesty when I first went to see him, if only to save myself the paperwork and lost time. I decided it was time to look for a new job.

The University of Dubuque

Jobs at small colleges for geologists are scarce, but that’s what I was looking for. One popped up on HigherEdJobs.com at the University of Dubuque. Frankly, I didn’t know where Dubuque was, nor was I clear on the location of Iowa. In my mind, I had it closer to Ohio. But the application was online, so I decided to give it a try. Soon after, the UD’s Vice President for Academic Affairs, John Stewart, called my office in New Orleans.

“Does it snow up there,” was one of my first questions, not the typical interview question. But my wife grew up in Florida, worked and met me in New Orleans, and was ready for seasons. Thus, my question.

“It’s in the upper Midwest,” John replied, a bit nonplussed at such a question.

Perhaps because the call seemed to come out of nowhere, and I already had a secure job, a house, a wife, and kids, I was less nervous about the call that I might have been. Regardless, John and I soon fell into a good discussion, and I followed up with an email that included a link to my web page. On it, besides course notes and a vita, I had an essay on helping students to find their vocation. Unbeknown to me, vocation was a loaded word at UD, a focus at the time as a path for students. One never knows what will click in a job search. I was invited to Dubuque for an interview.

Before I visited, John asked me, “Would you be willing to take the job for this fall semester?” The previous geology and left, and UD needed classes taught. However,I had already committed to team-teaching a course with a friend, plus I had a house I’d need to sell. The spring semester would be as soon as I could move. John’s response was to suggest that I wait and interview in the fall, teach a class, and meet some faculty members. Hmmm…

My wife and I are no great fans of delaying a decision. (We were engaged two months after we met.) After talking, I called John back,

“I’ll pay my airfare to Dubuque if you’ll feed and house me,”

I offered. John accepted, and I flew into Dubuque in midsummer. The plane landed at the Dubuque airport, surrounded by cornfields, where John picked me up. I would be staying in a basement apartment in his house. As we drove into town, the flat cornfields gave way to incised streams, then the bluffs of the Mississippi River. Beautiful. And though I didn’t realize it at the time, the weather was particularly pleasant during my visit, a real relief after the New Orleans summer heat. After a few days visit, meeting multiple ad-ministrators and a few future colleagues, I had an offer. I returned home and started getting the house ready to sell.

We moved to Dubuque in mid-December, arriving on a Thurs-day. My two daughters had never seen snow fall. On that first Sunday night, both daughters were in bed, wearing footy pajamas, when it started snowing. I brought them out where they danced in the snow on the front sidewalk. The move had gone well. I hoped my new job would go as well.