“I think like a scientist and my interest in stunted trees probably goes back to my upbringing. I had a difficult childhood with a father who insisted that he was right about everything all the time. And in my early years as a scientist, I was trying to find some system that would not argue back to me. I loved working with organisms that were themselves repressed by nature. It's a wonderful thing to stand like Gulliver on top of an entire ecosystem that's only three inches tall. And ask yourself, am I any happier than it? And I wasn't. And I found that tremendously thrilling to have a different perspective.”