Growing up in Florida running wild through the woods and wading through the swamps I always wanted to figure out how the natural world worked. And I am still trying. I am broadly trained as an ecologist with extremely broad interests. Because I couldn't figure out if I wanted to study plants or animals I started out working on plant-animal interactions, mostly from the perspective of how animals affect plant success. And that is still a major love. The first ten years of my research career were spent in the tropical forests of Ecuador, Panama, and Cost Rica, but a postdoctoral experience in Spain over 30 years ago changed my life -- in many ways. But a major way was to stimulate an interest in arid and semi-arid shrublands and woodlands, which is the systems I have been working in since. My initial training was as a basic evolutionary ecologist, but the opportunity of a job at Utah State gave me the chance to satisfy my basic ecological curiosity while getting the added benefit of seeing my work applied to real world problems. I can do both and I am quite happy.