I arrived in Bozeman, Montana in June of 1976. Bozeman is surrounded by quite overt geology - mountains in every direction, faulting (thrust and normal), igneous rocks (intrusive and extrusive), metamorphic rocks (regional and contact), and sedimentary rocks.

The first school year was spent getting married, dropping everything to go to Wisconsin for my grandfather's funeral, and trying to make a living managing a Country Kitchen restaurant and selling life insurance. You can't eat the scenery!

I managed to fit in a few graduate geology courses, though, and to line up a summer geojob, plus land the teaching assistantship of the Mineralogy / Petrology sequence the following fall.