Environmental Bio

I think a lot about how a "city person" or an "outdoorsy person" can come to be. Specifically, I wonder if someone has to be born and raised in either a city or a rural place to appreciate that kind of environment. Do you have to be born and raised on a coast to love and feel connected to the ocean? Probably not, but it's interesting (and honestly stumping) to think about how a person ends up relating to the natural or man-made environment that they grew up in. 

These thoughts stem from a drastic shift of environment I experienced when I was eight years old. I lived in the suburbs of Chicago, so close to the city that if you stood on the right street, there was a view of the Willis Tower. Then, at eight, we moved to the Upper Valley in VT and NH. It was like taking a record player and flipping it over; for every brick in Chicago there was now at least five leaves in the Upper Valley. 

Now, the kind of environment in which I feel the most secure, curious, and playful is in nature. This isn't a feeling that I was born with, but it also wasn't something I had to artificially curate. It's something that's only intensified as I continue to learn and explore the vastness of nature.