I think I was about six years old when I began catching things called horny toads. Actually they’re lizards, not toads, and I what attracted me to them is they look like miniature dinosaurs. Unlike regular lizards, these have a round pancake-like body, and out the back of their heads sprouts a crown of horns. [...]

Across the street from my childhood home was open desert, and when I was about 8 years old and was feeling the freedom of my first bicycle, my friends and I would go out and ride for miles down dirt roads that crisscrossed through the cactus and brush. We explored ruins of adobe buildings where [...]