Nostalgia

Here are a few somewhat embarrassing but highly nostalgic photos I recently found among my mom's photos that she has in my old room at home from which she chooses photos to watercolor:

 with my parents in our back yard in Falls Church, VA

 with a cow friend

 Visiting my second grade teacher at the beach

 My first visit to the Philadelphia Zoo, where I worked as a curator 2010-2014 (they had penguins and in the DC area we only had puffins at the National Aquarium, so we went to Philly to see the penguins)

with a sheep dog friend named Winston

A lot of my best earliest memories center around the time I spent at the Smithsonian's National Zoo, primarily in the Great Ape House and other primate areas that I now oversee in my job as curator of these areas. In second grade I interviewed Lisa Stevens, the long-time primate/giant panda curator, for a project comparing lowland and mountain gorillas.

My interview at the Zoo was just weeks after Dian Fossey had been murdered in Rwanda. It was this interview and my interest in the mountain gorillas that made me determined to study great apes in the wild. Here is an archived video that I distinctly remember seeing when it was originally aired the same week as my interview with Lisa, complete with some fascinating words about Dian Fossey from Jane Goodall a month after the murder: Dian Fossey Murdered in Rwanda

with Lisa Stevens at NZP's Great Ape House

at NZP's Lemur Island (then Monkey Island)

At Rehoboth Beach in DE, sporting a visor from NZP

I have a lot of early memories of my first camping experiences. Before years of summer camp at Geneva Glen Camp in Indian Hills, Colorado and even more years of living in a jungle in Indonesian Borneo, there was the scouts, led by my mother:

With a peacock at Camp Potomac Woods, VA. 

With the scouts outside our tent one year looking very excited to be camping in my 

"Take a Hike" shirt. My mother was our scout leader--wearing jeans, just to the left of Jenny K. 

Looking a little more disgruntled than in the previous scout photo…

Up a tree while taking a break on a hike with the scouts...

When I wasn't camping with the scouts or at summer camp in Colorado, I was hiking 

with family and friends in Vermont, the state where billboards have been outlawed! 

I also have very happy memories of the years I spent working in the forests of Borneo with wild orangutans. Here are a few photos that make me particularly nostalgic:

first UNAS Short Course at Tuanan Orangutan Project field site, 2003

visitors from Tuanan to Sungai Lading Orangutan Project field site, 2005

with friends visiting from Tuanan at Sungai Lading camp, 2006

with Deden at Camp Sungai Lading during flood, 2006

at Cabang Panti, Gunung Palung Orangutan Project field site, 2009

table tennis at Rumah Nyamuk ("Mosquito House"), Cabang Panti 2010

on the bridge we built leading from camp to the swamp, Cabang Panti 2009

my last day at Cabang Panti, 2010

a party we had one night at Cabang Panti, 2008

miss this… in the Gunung Palung forest ca 2009

…and a few other photos that make me feel particularly nostalgic:

visiting Gillian, my best childhood friend, soon after she moved to 

Nantucket (as for the outfits all I have to say is hey, it was the 80s!)

hard to remember that my little cousin Ben (baby on the left) is now a 

grown man with a baby of his own (far right)

My late great uncle Elwin and great aunt June (who died at age 103!) moved to Colorado, built an A-frame on the side of a mountain in Ouray, and learned how to downhill ski in their 70s. Elwin used to tell me all about about the philleaghly birds (Philleaghigius pendragonus): native to Colorado, they are especially well-suited to mountainous terrain. They have one leg shorter than the other, making it easier to walk up and down mountains. Their backsides are bald, because they slide down the mountain on them shouting "philleaghly, philleaghly!"