Interests

My parents often took my brother and me hiking as children, an activity that I generally found distasteful at the time. Now, however, I'm grateful to them for exposing me to nature as a child: After spending my work week in front of a computer, it's rejuvenating to lose myself in the woods for a while. Hiking is exercise, but it is more importantly an opportunity to reconnect with the natural world and with myself. It is a time to be present and notice my surroundings. I've collected links to a few locations where I commonly hike near my home, and some places where I've travelled that have particularly inspired me.

Around Southeast Michigan

• Kensington Metropark has a nature study area offering hikes of a few miles. White-tailed deer, chickadees, and cranes are common, and the loop around Wildwing Lake has some rewarding views.
• Indian Springs Metropark contains the headwaters of the Huron River and several miles of enjoyable hiking. Particularly striking are the large number of Allegheny ant mounds rising from the ground along the trails like cities hugging a river bank.
• Brighton State Recreation Area contains a five mile loop through a surprisingly lush and dense forest.
• Waterloo-Pinckney Recreation Areas are actually two adjacent parks. There is a 36 mile trail from Waterloo Recreation Area to Pinckney Recreation Area, making this one of the only places to go backpacking in southern Michigan.

Further Out

• Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore will transform your image of Michigan. Hiking over sand dunes for miles in anticipation of the sight of majestic Lake Michigan is challenging: the summer heat makes this feel like an excursion in the desert.
• Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of the most beautiful National Parks. From hiking through dense woods to reach serene Rainbow Falls, scrambling over steep boulders to reach the incredible panorama atop Chimney Tops, or walking along a ledge only a few feet wide on the Alum Cave Bluffs trail while holding onto a wire bolted into the mountainside, the Smoky Mountains are a hiker's paradise.
• Yellowstone National Park is the first National Park and one of the most popular. The awe one feels at the incredible display of geysers and hot springs dotting the park is matched only by the reward of viewing herds of wild bison on a hike in the back country.
• Joshua Tree National Park is a gorgeous desert park with beautiful flora (the eponymous Joshua Tree, for example) and massive rocky cliffs which make for superb rock climbing.

The first house that my wife and I bought together came with a small grass lot and no landscaping. Over the course of a few years, I slowly added beds around the house and planted perennials. I found working outside in the dirt and among plants a welcome respite from my day-to-day experience in an office. As such, I started exploring gardening as a proper hobby, attending classes sponsored by the Michigan State Extension service, reading books, and slowly adding to the landscape around our home.

Our garden is still very much a work-in-progress, but currently consists of four distinct areas: A shade garden populated by hostas, coral bells, black snakeroot, and astilbe; a walkway flanked by yarrow, creeping thyme, silver mound, salvia, and creeping phlox; a circular bed hosting black-eyed susan, asters, and a rose bush; and a full-sun border with catmint, bee balm, geraniums, and speedwell. As we grow the garden, we're considering the addition of native plants to help support local biodiversity.

Given my interest in hiking and the outdoors, I am deeply committed to conservation efforts to preserve and restore native landscapes for future generations. To this end, I have volunteered at Livingston Land Conservancy's Pasinski Preserve in Oceola Township, helping to clear trails to provide access to the interior of the preserve; I've participated in workdays with the Michigan DNR's State Park Stewardship Program, pulling invasive weeds such as spotted knapweed and garlic mustard; and I've attended classes and field experiences with the Michigan Conservation Stewards Program to learn more about conservation, plant identification, and ecology.

It was a lifelong dream of my Dad's to travel to Poland, the birthplace of his grandparents. We travelled there in 1990, beginning an annual tradition of family trips that exposed me to diverse cultures and natural wonders.

As an adult, I've been fortunate to continue travelling to beautiful locations in Michigan, the United States, and across the world. With three young children, my wife and I don't travel as often as we would like, but we hope to share our love of travel with our kids as they grow up.

The below table summarizes the major trips I've taken since 1990:

When reading for pleasure, I tend to favor novels over works of non-fiction. Some of my favorites (in no particular order) include:

• The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
• The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R Tolkein
• A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini
• Hannah Coulter, by Wendell Berry
• Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon
• The Trial, by Franz Kafka
• Sphere, by Michael Crichton
• The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
• The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
• The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
• The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern
• Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
• Room, by Emma Donoghue

Go

I became aware of Go while watching Aronofsky's film Pi. Go (or weiqi in Chinese, baduk in Korean) is an ancient game of strategy. Two players alternate placing white and black stones on a 19-by-19 grid with the objective of surrounding as much territory on the board as possible. When a group of stones is completely surrounded by opposing stones, they are captured and removed from the board. The elegance of Go is in the complex strategy that develops from such simple rules.

Unlike chess, no computer program has yet been written that can challenge the strongest professional players. This is partly due to the immense number of possible game states inherent in a 19-by-19 board: exhaustive search by a computer for the best move to make is simply not possible in Go as it is in other board games. Some have claimed that no two games of Go have ever been identical.

Go is most enjoyable played in person with a friend, but there exist many resources to play Go on the computer, including Kiseido Go Server, Internet Go Server, and Online Go Server. The American Go Association sponsors local clubs and tournaments, which provides another avenue of play.

Other Favorites

Music

I play acoustic guitar and drums, poorly. When I was in college, I took lessons from a friend on music theory and technique; I enjoyed learning the theory, devising chord progressions, and dabbling with recording, but I never bothered to learn how to play real songs. Nevertheless I briefly had ambitions to become a songwriter, even writing several songs for Lauren. She married me anyway.

Rock Climbing

For the first few years of college, rock climbing was a passion of mine. I trained regularly at the local climbing gym in Ann Arbor, progressing until I could climb 5.10 routes. I climbed outdoors at Grand Ledge, MI, Red River Gorge, KY, New River Gorge, WV, and Joshua Tree National Park, CA. My climbing career came to an end in 2001 after a 20 foot fall in a climbing gym, where I sustained a fractured hip and several bulging discs in my lower back.