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Laird Christensen

Hometown: Portland, Oregon.

Favorite course to teach: Any of the block courses I've been lucky enough to participate in (Chinese Mountain Poetry, the Hudson River, Wilderness in Vermont).

Interests/hobbies: Hiking, playing mandolin, basketball.

Toughest class I took in college: Probably Algebra—yes, basic Algebra. I put it off until my last semester because math and I don't get along very well.

Something surprising about me: I've crossed the country, by car or by thumb (in my younger days), close to 100 times -- sometimes several times in a single year. Wandering is still so much a part of me that sometimes I'll cross the country twice in a night in my dreams: There's Lake Champlain, there's my friend in Iowa, there's the Sawtooth Range, there's my home in Oregon; and now there's my friend in Missoula, there's Willa Cather's home in Nebraska, there's my old house in Illinois, and I’m suddenly back in Vermont!

What “the environment” means to me: Not only the land and water and sky that surrounds me at any given moment, but all the critters and plants and processes that belong to it.

Research interests: These days I’m most interested in studying the way that people connect (or don’t connect) to the places where they live. Bioregionalism gives me an academic way to think about this, but I’m also interested in just learning the names of all the other beings who share this place with me. I’m currently preparing a course on “The Idea of Vermont,” which is an attempt to better understand the culture of my adopted home.

Best concert I've seen: The String Cheese Incident—any of the Horning’s Hideout shows!

Recommended movie: Into the Wild, Sean Penn’s adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s remarkable book.

Book I recently enjoyed: People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks.

Best place I've traveled to: It’s a tie: either the Anasazi dwellings along Salt Creek in Utah’s Canyonlands, the Never-Summer Wilderness in northern Colorado, or the top of the ridge behind my house.

Favorite research project with a student: Co-writing a book with a class of environmental writers that told the history of a single watershed.