I have a deep connection with a remote lake in Upstate New York and it’s called Cranberry Lake. I went to Cranberry Lake as a kid, my father was the director of a biological station there and I got to spend six years in the summer time as a young kid. Basically all my time on the water, or running along the banks of the water or sifting the sand, mixed with black iron material, through my hands. I was fascinated by the black sand, I thought it was from a volcano as a kid. We were on the margin of a volcano in Upstate New York.

Then I could go swimming and fishing and spending a lot of time playing games in the water with my siblings. I think water imprinted upon me and the lakes imprinted upon me and today I’m a professor of biology and I study lakes and I study Great Lakes and really value the water and all that is in it.