When I was a little boy, I lived in upstate New York, not too far from the Great Lakes.

We were way, way out in the country, and I had this primal memory. I was no more than four years old,

and I would go along the edge of our house, the cement foundation of our house,

and I would pull back the grass at the edge of the cement. And there would be these little

salamanders called red afts. They were the larval stage of a salamander that would later move into the water.

But these little beautiful orange, brick-red creatures would be there between the grass and the cement.

And I just have this primal memory of the wonder of seeing one of these creatures.

In my yard there in the country in New York, there were lots of rocks that were filled with fossils.

And if those rocks were in the water, I would go pick them up and study the fossils.

And maybe under the rock would be a crayfish or a dusky salamander.

If I lifted those same rocks that were on land, there might be a garter snake or red-bellied snake or milk snake under them.

I think those little red afts and those fossil rocks made a lifelong impact on me.

They gave me a sense of curiosity and wonder about nature, non-living and living.

When you start to see the world with that kind of curiosity and wonder, it gets very hard to be bored. Your life is just filled with

constant opportunities to be amazed. I think I had a feeling often in school that maybe you've had as well.

This feeling that education involved explaining away the wonder.

I would see this amazing snake going through the grass and I'd be amazed by it but maybe I'd be told oh

that's nothing but a lampropeltus jettullis or in other words by giving a Latin name to it it now was

nothing but nothing but an example of this category of scientific phenomenon.

It's so strange that by naming something, we think we actually understand it,

and we've removed its wonder.

I think I had the same feeling in church.

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