So Far

A Chronological History

Creation Parable

Once upon a time in a faraway land, there was a very special place where the jungle came right up to the ocean. The jungle creatures lived in the jungle and did jungle things, and the ocean creatures lived in the ocean and did ocean things. But on one magical night each year, the crabs would come out of the ocean and go to the edge of the jungle, and the lions would come out of the jungle and go to the edge of the ocean, and they would dance all night long. The crabs would dance like crabs, and the lions would dance like lions, but they danced together in a celestial embrace that bonded them together in the universe.

This went on for time immemorial, until one year when a crab and a lion came together and had a human boy. The boy would swim in the ocean with the crabs, and hunt in the jungle with the lions. The crabs accepted him, and he felt at home in the ocean. The lions accepted him, and he felt at home in the jungle. But when he was in the ocean he could not roar, and when he was in the jungle he could not scuttle, so he chose to go off and live with other humans.

As he grew, he would watch what the humans did with each other, and hear what the humans said to each other. He would do things with humans the way he would swim with crabs, and he would say things to humans the way he would hunt with lions. The humans did not understand him, but they felt that he understood them, and they trusted him with their secrets. They liked him, and they invited him to their parties, but they knew he was not one of them, so the boy grew up alone, and the man grew old alone.

When he was out of time, the man returned to the place where the jungle meets the ocean. His parents were long since dead. He no longer knew any crabs to swim with, nor any lions to hunt with. But he was there on the magical night when they all came out to dance. And as he watched the crabs and lions dance together, he thought about his life. He was happy to have lived with crabs, he was happy to have lived with lions, he was happy to have lived with humans, and he was happy to have lived alone, because he always had within him every crab, and every lion, and every human he had ever known.

When the night was over and the sun came up, the crabs returned to the ocean and the lions returned to the jungle, and the man lay down alone and returned to his parents.

Creation Myth

My father loved to canoe and to go camping. My mother loved neither of those things, but she loved my father, so she went along with it. One day my father decided to combine the two. At the time my mother was pregnant with me, and my older brother was still a babe in arms, but that did not dissuade my father from proposing a canoe camping trip. They would canoe out into Lake Ontario to an island where they would set up camp for the weekend. My mother humored him and agreed to go along.

My father loaded up the car and put the canoe on top. My mother got in, and with the baby on her lap, they drove off. It was a beautiful day, and they canoed out into the open water without incident. My father set up camp, and they enjoyed a nice afternoon.

That night a storm blew in. They hunkered down in the tent hoping that it would not blow away. It was at that time that I decided I wanted out. My mother went into labor. But it was the middle of the night and they were stranded on an island in the midst of a storm. They had to wait for morning.

When day broke the storm was still raging. It was not safe to canoe back to shore, but they couldn't stay there. I was coming out one way or the other, so they had to risk it. My father broke camp and loaded up the canoe. He lay my mother down on the floor of the canoe up front, put my brother in her arms, and they set off in the wind and the rain.

My father did his best to fight the waves and paddle to shore. All the while my mother was in the throes of labor. My father could not attend to her because it took all his strength and attention to keep the tiny vessel from capsizing as they inched closer to the mainland. But I could not be made to wait. When they were but half-way to safety I came out.

My mother let out a scream. My father looked down and saw me on the bottom of the boat. He scooped me up, rinsed me off in the lake water, thrust me into my mother's arms, and got back to paddling. We were all tossed to and fro, but my father kept it together, and was able to bring us in to land. They left the canoe on the shoreline as they all climbed into the car and sped off to the hospital. I was given a clean bill of health, as was my mother, and my long strange trip had begun.

In The Beginning

My earliest memory, ironically, is going into the closet. I hadn't yet reached my third birthday. My brother was a year older than me. He and I were running around the house, and we scampered into my parents closet and closed the door behind us. That's the first memory I have in this life.

We were living in a ranch house in Watertown New York, which was a small city in the northern regions, off the shores of Lake Ontario near where it empties into the St. Lawrence River in the Thousand Islands region. The other side of the river was Canada. We got Canadian programming on the rabbit ears of our black & white television, so I had an international influence from an early age.

This was the early 60's. For those of you who've seen "Mad Men," if Don and Betty Draper had another child when the story opens, that would have been me. I was too young and unaware of culture to have had any concept of what life was like back then, but the pictures in our photo album say it all. LBJ was in the Whitehouse, post-war technology had become commonplace, the country hadn't yet gotten mired in Viet Nam, and people were excited about the future.

I had a happy childhood. My father was an attorney in private practice. My mother was a stay-at-home mom, pregnant with my younger brother at the time. Another early memory I have is her coming home from the maternity ward and walking through the front door with the newborn in her arms. They were loving and attentive parents. They got along perfectly. There was never any conflict or strife in the household beyond the pandemonium of raising three boys.

I have a number of memories of those early years. I remember playing games in the house with my older brother. I remember the time my father accidentally brought home buttermilk. I remember crawling around on the kitchen counter when my father was on the wall-mounted rotary dial phone, and I innocently grabbed the hook and hung up on him. I remember the two old ladies who shared the house behind ours and adored my brother and me.

There were lots of other kids in the neighborhood and we would often play together. My father's law partner had two boys, one named Mark was my age, and the other a year older than my younger brother. We would be brought together for play dates from time to time, but I found Mark to be rather pesky. Even at that young age I was discerning about the company I kept. Our interactions always wound up being contentious. I wasn't very fond of him.

When I was four years old the family was starting to outgrow that little ranch house. My father's practice was doing well, so they decided to look for a bigger place. They found a big old Victorian house right on the border between downtown and the residential district. My brother and I loved the house, so they decided to buy it. I was very excited.

No sooner did we move in than I learned my father's partner bought the house right next-door, and the pesky Mark would be around every day. I wasn't too happy about that. But it was what it was. Their family culture was different from ours. My parents were more staid and proper. Their parents smoked cigarettes, the father played golf and hung out with his golf buddies, and their house was always messy. But they got along with my parents, and I did my best to manage my friendship with Mark.

The next year I started kindergarten. The elementary school was a half-mile away. My mother walked me there on the first day, and after that I was left to walk there and back alone. It was a very different time, and not at all unusual or uncommon for a five-year-old to walk a half-mile to school and back unaccompanied. But my brother went to the same school, and there were lots of other neighborhood kids walking to school and back, so I was not exactly alone.

Those early school years were uneventful. By third grade I was the class clown. The teacher was known for being quite strict, but she let me get away with murder. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was because I was otherwise a good student. I remember one particular instance when our assignment was to come up with three holidays. I decided I would pick two common ones, but would use my birthday as the third because I knew I could get a laugh. When the teacher called on me I said Christmas, Halloween, and then the date of my birthday. She asked what's so special about that date, and I replied, "It's my birthday!" The whole class laughed just like I expected they would. Even at that young age I was thinking ahead, setting up jokes, and delivering punchlines.

The next three years were spent at another school. It was a large complex that had just been built out behind the junior high and high school buildings. My class was the first to go through all three years in the new facility. It was designed with an open-class concept. By now we had turned the corner to the early 70's, and there was a lot of cultural experimentation going on. This school was a mile away, so I had to take the bus. But back then we didn't have door-to-door service, so I still had to walk up to the end of the block to the bus stop. I would socialize with the other neighborhood kids while we waited.

At this point my personality had changed somewhat. In this new and strange environment I was no longer the class clown. I continued to do well in my classwork, but was getting admonished for not paying attention. This was also the age when kids started using curse words, discussing adult topics, and telling dirty jokes. I was hopelessly naive, so that kind of put me at the back of the class socially. My older brother didn't school me in any of this stuff. One time I asked him to explain to me a dirty joke I had heard, and he rather freaked out that I would even go there. So I was left to try to piece it together myself. I would sometimes elicit explanations from my peers, but then I'd get teased for not already knowing it. I had one friend who was actually a year younger than me, but he had a household full of older brothers who were much better at clueing him in, so he was somewhat of a social mentor for me.

The Formative Years

Next came junior high. This was when my personality really changed. The very first day we had an assembly in the auditorium. I was a little late, so I had to stand in the back. That made me feel a little left out, and I was somewhat intimidated by this new environment. That set the stage for me developmentally. I became somewhat withdrawn and shy, and started spending more time alone. This was right around the dawn of my adolescence. Little did I know at the time that these personality traits would get locked in, and be at the core of my identity for the rest of my life.

It was also around this time that I was coming to realize that I didn't fit in at home. My father loved to ski. He put me and my brothers on skis from the moment we could stand on two feet. They took to it, I didn't. I was not athletic in any way. I wasn't coordinated, and I wasn't crazy about physical activity. My parents treated all of us the same, but it was getting to the point that my brothers shared things with my father that I didn't. I was okay with that. As long as he didn't force me to get all bundled up and go out on the slopes, I was happy. But it meant that I spent even more time alone.

The summer before ninth grade my parents were getting concerned that I was becoming too isolated. I would come straight home after school and just watch TV until it was dinnertime. They consulted my eighth grade biology teacher, whom they knew from church. He was a big hulk of a man. He told them that the best thing that ever happened to him at that age was when he joined the football team. So these three adults who were otherwise intelligent and reasonable people all came to the conclusion that since football had been good for him, that it would be good for the diminutive, nerdy, string bean of a kid that I was.

They told me of their decision and I was shocked. They might as well have told me they were sending me to Outer Mongolia. I tried to talk them out of it. I tried to explain that I had no business being on a football field. I didn't know how to play football, and I had no desire to learn. I was going to get creamed by all the other guys twice my size. But they wouldn't listen to reason. They insisted.

My mother brought me there the next day. Classes hadn't started yet, but practice had. All the other kids already had their equipment and had become familiar with the drills. The coach tossed some pads at me, assigned me a locker, and threw me to the wolves. I was a fish out of water. I was completely lost. I couldn't run like they could, I couldn't catch a football, and I was tiny compared to the rest of them. The only thing that saved mew as I didn't have a mouthpiece so I couldn't participate in any contact activity. I was supposed to go and get one, but I never did, because I knew that then I would have to be in the melee with the rest of them.

When the actual season started to roll around I became terrified. I would have to actually get out on the field, pretend I knew what I was doing, and be at risk of being run over by the actual football players I would be interacting with. I was so fearful of this that I actually started contemplating self-harm to injure myself in some way that would keep me on the bench.

By the grace of god one night the evening news had a story about the dangers of forcing children to participate in sports against their will. I pointed at the TV and said, "See! Do you see what you're doing to me???" My parents finally came to their senses. They said that I could quit the football team, but that I had to play a sport. This time they let me choose what that sport would be. They went from the worst decision they made my whole childhood to the best.

I chose swim team. The only danger I faced was potentially getting an unwanted boner wearing a speedo bathing suit and being around all the other boys in their speedos. Other than that, no one was going to tackle me, I didn't have to throw or catch a ball, and I didn't need any other manner of hand/eye coordination. Instead I got incredibly rigorous cardio/vascular conditioning just as my body was beginning to mature. It was absolutely the best thing for me.

Later that school year there was another major development. We all got an assignment to write our autobiographies. I was immediately inspired to write openly about the most intimate and personal aspects of my life. It seemed to unburden me to spell out all my feelings on paper. It was a trend that continues to this day.

As I was composing my essay I wrote about how I hated that Mark moved in right next door to me, and I spoke somewhat disparaging about his family. He was a classmate of mine at the time, and he had the same assignment. He innocently asked to read my essay. I couldn't really say no, but I knew what would happen when he read that part. I reluctantly handed it over to him, and I could see it on his face when he read what I wrote about him. He didn't really say anything except that he didn't know I felt that way, but it was the end of our friendship. It was a big lesson to me that when you write openly about other people in your life and your feelings towards them, it can have a devastating effect on the relationship.

On the surface this didn't impact me much. I was kind of unburdened from having to interact with him as neighbor, and he and I didn't really travel in the same social circles anyway. But the next year we would start high school, which is where major social development really occurs. Mark became more popular, and I became less. I would be alone in my bedroom in the evenings, and through my open window I would hear him and his friends hanging out on his porch. They were the cool kids and I was the loner. I began to feel more and more alone and left out of the social engagement they enjoyed. This was happening at a critical phase of emotional development, and those feelings of isolation would haunt me for the rest of my life.

I did have my own a circle of friends. It was small but solid. We were all nerds. Some were science nerds. Others were music nerds. I kind of had one foot in each camp. I had a very logical and scientific mind, but I also had a creative side and an appreciation for the arts. We were somewhat rejected by high school society as nerds tend to be, but we were never really oppressed. We did our own thing, and we kept out of the way of the bad boys, and for the most part we were left alone.

By senior year I started coming out of my shell a little. My circle of friends had expanded a bit. As the thought of college drew nearer, bookish nerds like me gained somewhat higher stature. I was slowly becoming more self-confident. I was elected co-captain of the swim team that year, which reflected emerging leadership qualities. By the end of the year I had reconciled with Mark, and I was tentatively accepted into the margins of the cool kid cadre. My high school career ended on a high note.

The College Years

It was during senior year that those of us who would be going on to college had to make choices and submit applications. I wanted to be an architect. This started when I was in kindergarten when one of my parents' friends saw me playing with blocks and said I should be an architect. It sounded good to me. While my contemporaries wanted to be cowboys and astronauts, I wanted to be an architect. As I grew and learned more about what architecture was, the more I realized it really was a good fit for me. The intersection of my technical and creative aptitudes was quite well suited to that profession. Beyond that, I just found it interesting.

My chosen career path helped narrow down the schools that I would apply to, but I was still intimidated by the process. The whole notion of going away to college was daunting, and the fear of my applications being rejected was formidable. This was exacerbated by the fact that architecture schools were mostly large, technical institutions in big cities far away. However Hobart College was a small private college not too far from home that offered a Bachelor of Architecture program.

My parents took me there to tour the campus. I wouldn't say they dragged me kicking and screaming, but I was still intimidated by the very notion of college, so I had an undercurrent of reluctance. I was pensive on the two hour drive. I felt tense as we passed through the college town where it was located, but as we came over the knoll and I saw Seneca Lake sprawling out to the left, and the quaint collegiate gothic campus on the right, I suddenly felt comfortable. It was my introduction to the Finger Lakes, which would play a large part in my later life.

The tour went well. I really fell in love with the campus. My fear and trepidation of college life melted away. I wound up applying early-decision, and was accepted. That was a huge load off my shoulders as I completed my senior year of high school. I had one last hurrah the following summer, and then the next chapter of my life began.

My transition to college life went well. By all measures a shy and timid nerd like me should have been overwhelmed by the new surroundings, but I took to it quite naturally. I thrived in the freedom of being out from under my parents' thumb, and not micro-managed by high school administrators.

Academically speaking, things went well. Hobart started the architecture students in a program of studio art and art history without any specific focus on architecture. Studio art was second-nature to me. It took me a while to get the knack of the art history curriculum, but once I caught on I excelled there. The only real fly in the ointment was math. It was my understanding that architects needed an extensive mathematics foundation. I could do the math, but I didn't like it. I had to force myself to sign up for the math classes, and I found the work rather arduous.

Socially I did okay. I kind of split my time between two groups. I fell into a friendship with a tight group of girls, and we all became very close. I was still deeply closed, so I didn't realize that they were effectively my fag hags, but that was really what they were. The other group I interacted with were science fiction / fantasy nerds. There was a Dungeons and Dragons club on campus. I had learned to play in high school, and I had become rather adept at it. I took on the role of Dungeon Master and ran a successful campaign, which put me at the center of things. We all saw each other socially outside of the games, and they became another friend group.

There was one other guy who was somewhat of an outlier but wound up having a big influence on me. His name was Rich, and I met him when he started dating one of the girls I was hanging out with. He was a character. He was a free spirit who had an extensive history of train-hopping and hitchhiking. I was immediately drawn to his adventurous nature and his uncompromising independence, but I was mostly captivated by his iconoclastic nature.

He wasn't like anyone else. He marched to the beat of his own drum. He stood apart. He knew it, and he reveled in it. His differences from his peers didn't make him question who he was. Quite the contrary. He was completely, entirely comfortable in his own skin. His uniqueness made him value himself above the others. It was a quality I admired in him. I wanted to be more like him.

This was a turning point for me. It got me in touch with my inner freak. I started to think, act, and speak in a way that was different from the people around me. I would say and do the opposite of what conventional people would say and do. On the surface this got me noticed. In high school I had been invisible. It had worked for me back then, but not anymore. I didn't want to live that way. I wanted to get attention and be remembered. I quickly found that this way of being would accomplish those goals.

This was more than superficial. I wasn't putting on an act. There was something deep down inside of me that had always been there but had been repressed. I had always been a nonconformist at heart, but I had restrained that part of me for the sake of being accepted by others. The result was that I blended in. I was now coming to discover that being different from everyone else didn't cause them to reject me. The less they understood me, the more they were drawn to me. And the more I stood out the more memorable I was. This became my new persona, and it would serve me well for the rest of my life.

Sophomore year two major things happened. I decided to take a break from the math classes that I didn't like, and I took a computer programming class on a lark just because I thought I would like it. Well I did like it. In fact I loved it. I was a natural at writing computer code. My brain just naturally thought the way computers thought, and I gobbled up the coursework as fast as my professors could dish it out. I felt like a savant. I was so taken with the field that I decided to change my career path on the spot. I had wanted to be an architect since I was in kindergarten, but in the blink of an eye I decided to pursue a career as a computer programmer.

The other thing that happened was that my friend Rich moved into a fraternity house. He had pledged in the spring of our freshman year. It was lost on me the contradiction that a nonconformist like him would embrace the conformity of fraternity life because I didn't really understand Greek culture and had no frame of reference. When he moved into the house I would come hang out in his room, and I gained an appreciation for what fraternity life was all about. It really was unbridled male bonding. It was a bunch of dudes hanging out with each other all the time and doing dude things. I was still in the closet with respect to my sexuality, but I was firmly in touch with my masculinity, and that male environment appealed to me on a fundamental level. I decided then and there that I wanted to be a part of it.

The thing was that my time at Hobart College would be coming to an end. They did not offer a Computer Science major. Potsdam College, which was part of the State University of New York, had a reputation for being on the leading edge of information science education. It was even farther north than where I grew up. I applied there as a transfer student and was accepted. I had become quite fond of Hobart College, and I had many good friends, there, but I needed to bid them a fond farewell and start over again at a different school.

As soon as I arrived on the Potsdam College campus I decided to pledge a fraternity to make a lot of friends fast, and to immerse myself in that male-oriented environment. I rushed all the houses equally, but one stood out. It had the best letters, Psi Phi (as in Sci Fi), the best colors (red and black), a big house on the banks of the river that flowed through town, and most of all a friendly and gregarious brotherhood that embraced nonconformity. They were the freak house. They said that if you don't fit in anywhere else you fit in there. It was the perfect fit for me.

Pledging was not fun. It was an emotional meat grinder. But it indoctrinated me into the ultra strong bonds of fraternity brotherhood. Once I became a member I immediately moved into the house. I thrived in that environment. I held a number of offices in the organization, including President, which boosted my self-esteem and taught me valuable organizational skills. But these years also took a toll on me. The pressures of college life were hard enough, but being a closeted gay boy in this hyper-heterosexual environment, plus the amount of drinking and drugging I was doing really put me through the wringer. But overall it was some of the most intensely happy years of my life.

Professional Life

By the time graduation rolled around I was torn. I didn't want to leave that safe and comfortable environment to go out into the real world, but I knew I had to. The one thing I was certain of was that I didn't want to go on to grad school. I needed to get a job and start my career. The problem was I had no prospects. I had a degree in an emerging field, and there were jobs everywhere, but I was in a quandary about how to find one. That made me very fearful and anxious about my future.

Graduation was paradoxically one of the low points of my life. We had "Senior Week" between the end of finals and commencement, which was supposed to be a big party week, but it rained all week long. It was a metaphor for my mood. I had no desire to go to my own commencement, but my parents who paid for all of this and waited all these years for me to get my degree insisted on watching me walk across the stage in my cap and gown. When the ceremony was over we were supposed to go outside to a reception. The grand procession headed for the exit, but they saw it was again raining out, so they turned around. The whole procession doubled back on itself, and mayhem ensued. No one knew where they were supposed to go, so it descended into somewhat of a mob. I walked around and around and around trying to locate my parents, but they were nowhere to be found. I felt like an orphan. I finally walked back to the fraternity house alone, and finally found them there waiting for me. We were invited to join one of my fraternity brothers for a meal at a local restaurant. He had a whole boisterous familial entourage with him. My parents and I sat down at the end of the table, three restrained WASPs quietly watching the others. It made me feel inadequate.

One of my college friends was already down in Washington DC at grad school. A room opened up in the boarding house where he lived. He said there were always tons of computer programming jobs listed in the Sunday paper. He invited me to take the room and seek a job down there. With nothing else on the horizon I took him up on it.

After a period of time living on pennies, I was able to find work and started my career in earnest. It was a decent job, and I made enough money to live on, but I wasn't enjoying life down there. I was a small town boy, and Washington DC was a tough town. Everyone was mean to me. The teller at the bank where I opened an account was mean to me, the guy I found to cut my hair was mean to me, the guy selling watch batteries at the mall kiosk was mean to me, and even the guy trying to pick me up the one time I went to a gay bar was mean to me. When school started up in the fall my friend returned to his graduate studies and he had no time for me. I was completely, entirely all alone in this big and unwelcoming city.

If I had been more in touch with my sexuality and had fully come out of the closet, I could have made a social life for myself in the expansive gay community down there, and my life may have turned out very differently. But I wasn't ready for that yet. Instead I sat alone in my room miserable. I missed my fraternity brothers and the hyper social lifestyle I led back there. Then one day it dawned on me that I didn't need to stay. My friend was locked into his grad program, but I could just pack up and go back home any time I wanted. And that was exactly what I did. I gave notice at work, and by the end of the month I was on my way back home again.

I was delighted to be back home, but I entered the darkest time of my life. It was not so easy to find another job. I wound up stuck in my parents' basement sending out resumes and getting rejection letters. There was nothing in the small town where I lived, so I was applying for jobs in Syracuse which was an hour south. Back then it felt like an eternity, but the truth was it only took a few months before I got an offer from a young company that needed a computer programmer. I didn't hesitate. I took the job, I found a place to live, and my adult professional life started in earnest.

At that point things were good and bad. I was making a decent living, I enjoyed my work, and I was free to go up and revel in the fraternity environment at will. But outside of those weekend trips I had virtually no social life, and while I enjoyed computer programming as a profession, the company I worked for was a nightmare. They made things much more stressful than they needed to be. And underneath it all, I was getting tired of pretending to be heterosexual. It was time to come out of the closet and live life as an openly gay man.

It was at this time that my mother got sick. On Mother's Day she was diagnosed with stomach cancer. When they did exploratory surgery they realized that it had spread everywhere, and there was no treating it. Over the course of the next year she made a bit of a recovery, but a year later on Mother's Day she relapsed, and it was the beginning of the end. I struggled in dealing with it. My thoughts weren't about myself and my loss. My stages of grief went directly to anger and stayed there. I was angry that this kind and benevolent woman would be struck down in this way, and angry that my poor father who had planned to grow old with her would now need to find his way on his own.

She spent her final months at home. I tried to be there for her, but I didn't really know how to do it. We had a fine relationship, but we had never been close. I tried to spend some time with her, but it was awkward. We just didn't have anything to talk about. One day I got a call at work that I needed to come directly home. I knew that this was the end. I drove the hour back to Watertown. The car I was driving overheated at highway speeds so I had to go 50mph the whole way. You would think the drive would drag on, but I was there in the blink of an eye.

I went into the house and directly to her room. My brothers were already there. When I walked in she smiled and said hello to me. I could see in her eyes that now that the last of her boys was there with her, and she could let go. She drifted off, and within an hour she was gone. I stayed by her bedside the whole time. When she let out her last breath part of me was relieved, but then the sense of loss really set in. I went downstairs to the basement and cried. He funeral service filled the church with friends, colleagues, and well-wishers. It wasn't until I saw all those people that I appreciated what an impact she'd had on our community.

Just when I was reaching the end of my rope working at that nightmarish company, another one of my fraternity brothers who was working in the IT department at Cornell University said that they had openings. I dashed off a resume, and to my delight I got hired. I was able to leave that miserable job behind. I took to my new job like a fish to water. Many people struggle with the transition from corporate life to higher education, but I was a good fit. The lack of corporate structure introduced inefficiencies, but by the same token they valued their workforce. My coworkers tended to bitch and moan about every little thing, but I told them they didn't know how good they had it.

When I first got there I just saw the job as a safe place to land after escaping the undesirable work environment where I had been stuck. I expected I would only be there long enough to catch my breath and decide where I wanted to go next. But it turned out I never really had a reason to leave. Cornell University was a prestigious place to work, and Ithaca NY was the crown jewel of the Finger Lakes. It was a very progressive town and a safe place to come out as gay. I began to carve out a social life, and I became more and more comfortable.

After I had been there a few years I came to the conclusion that I wouldn't be going anywhere. I decided to buy a house and really lay down roots. I engaged a realtor and gave my list of criteria, the first of which being that it needed acreage so I would have space to go off in nature and enjoy peace and privacy. She would identify listings that met my criteria and I would do drive-bys. I went to check out one that was a few miles away on the side of town that was convenient to commute into the Cornell campus. As I came upon it the first thing I saw was a cemetery at the end of the driveway. My initial thought was that would be interesting to live next to a graveyard. The house was nothing special, but on the other side of it was a creek. As soon as I saw natural running water I knew it was the right place for me.

I was able to scrape up a down payment (with my father's help), and get approved for a mortgage. Within a few months everything was set. The closing went smoothly, but as the seller handed over the keys she mentioned that the people who built the house, and the first generations who lived there, were all buried in the cemetery out back. That thought had never occurred to me. Those first few nights were a little spooky as I wondered when the ghosts would come out to meet the new guy who had moved into their house. But fortunately things remained quiet and eventually I got over it.

It took me quite a while to really settle in. I lived like a squatter at first. But I slowly started buying furniture and making the place my own. I also explored the property out back. There was the farm field out behind, woods behind that, and of course the creek running along one side. I laid down some trails and established spaces I could walk to and relax. I began to cherish the place as a comfortable homestead.

I had been there just over a year when I discovered my knack for self-photography. That was when I started having exotic life adventures, all of which are documented further on this website.

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