I grew up in California and Oregon and spent my twenties exploring western North America through work and play. My experiences on oceans and in the mountains nurtured a fascination with the West that has evolved into scholarly interests about contests over natural resources. I studied history and geography at the University of Oregon (1990, 1992) and University of Washington (1996), and I have taught at Iowa State University, University of Portland, and Simon Fraser University. I am also an affiliated researcher at Stanford University's Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis, and I have had fellowships at the Smithsonian Institution, National Humanities Center, and Stanford University. Mostly, though, I think of myself as a dad who happens to be a professor of history and geography, although I will also confess to having a special, possibly innate gift for destroying 1963 Chevy pickups.