This page, being personal, doesn't like structure. It'll improve as I learn more about myself and find time to publish the results. The last time I edited it was August 8, 2007, but that has very little bearing on the sequence of the content - my memory doesn't work sequentially, so neither does my webpage. Since my last edits, the content and management of this page has been taken over by Facebook, so go there if you're interested in more current information.
So, here I am as far as I can tell.
I am a doctoral student of ecology at Duke University. I'm 30 years old, the eldest son of two Catholic school teachers, and the second of four siblings. I've lived in Ohio, Florida, South Carolina, Utah, and now North Carolina; I've travelled in the United States, Spain, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Italy, Nepal (Fig. 1), and northern Baja California; I've taken vacations in too many places to list. As evidenced by the pages that most likely brought you here, I love my career. It brings me not enough money to pay off my undergraduate student loans in the foreseeable future, but more than enough exploration to entertain a greedy mind. ...It has also allowed me to befriend some of the most amazing people on Earth.
Arising from my parentage, and in positive feedback with my friendships, my most natural interactions with others are of reciprocal teaching and learning. My best friends are therefore predominantly students, teachers, and explorers of various sorts. All are good at whatever they do, and I learn from them continually. I have three siblings: Trish, the eldest, has returned to investment banking in New York from a brief stint as a journalist in Mongolia (blog); Tim - the second youngest - teaches English in Europe and Russia, and does things like walking across France to raise awareness of slavery (page) and funds to stop it (page); and Danny - the youngest - is performing better in high school than his siblings did and is now exploring his options for college.
My single hobby is exploration. I use boots, backpacks, bicycles, a beat-up truck truck (R.I.P.), my Subaru Baja, and occasionally boats to get places to which I have not yet been (OK, quite a lot of computer time, too). Once arrived - and more frequently along the way - I enjoy camping, photography, fishing (both spin- and fly-), and dendrology. I especially prefer forested mountains and rivers, but any place new will do. Whereas I once travelled to avoid other humans, I find myself increasingly enjoying the personalities of the people along the way. I greatly prefer travellers over tourists, and I am continually learning the difference: tourists go on vacation to vacate their lives whereas travellers go to enter and enrich. All of this is timely, since some of my best friends are moving to topographically unimpressive and suburban places like Dallas, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. Others, I selfishly hope, will stay right where they are.
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| Figure. 1. Om mani padme hum. Taken by my sister, Trish Sexton, in the gorge of the Kali Gandaki River, a few thousand meters below Annapurna Base Camp, Nepal, in October 2003. I will never meet a more intrepid traveller than my own sister - few have seen more of Earth in situ than she. |