The National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence told the graduates that after studying anthropology and spending two years in the Amazon, he had no idea what to do. His mother screamed 'You're 23 years old!' He took a job in a logging camp, then worked as a park ranger and a river guide, and at one point applied to law school and graduate school in botany as if they were the same thing. His father waited nearly ten years to see any return on his investment in his son's education — and died with a copy of a review of Davis's first book in his pocket. Every experience, he said, had been formative.