In school I studied, fueled by visions of sepia toned photographs filled with grim faced adventurers embarking on expeditions into unknown territories. I took classes in zoology, biology, chemistry, physics, and astronomy, determined to become one of the brave travelers I had read about.

But as I progressed in the sciences I became increasingly disenchanted. All that seemed to wait for me was a familiar world of sterile labs and office politics. A student job in the museum kept me alone in a basement re-bottling specimens that had been collected almost a hundred years ago. This is the pecking order of science. The basement was where recruits were worn down until finally allowed to re-emerge; now fully appreciative of re-location to a surface laboratory. Down there in a musty museum basement surrounded by decaying specimens and out of reach from cell phones and internet something went awry in their plans for me.

I would lay back at work and close my eyes to the smell of drying animal skin and formaldehyde. The soft rush of the air vent always brought me to small encampments deep in jungles or baking under desert suns. Strange sights awaited the intrepid explorers who lived there, in my mind.

I balked at the suggestion I return to the surface when the eventual offer was extended. Their golden ticket had become tarnished to me. There were entire worlds in my underground lair, on the surface there was only one. The choice to stay was easy.

Still it was my work that ultimately drove home the proof that the dreams I had would never become reality. My failure to return to the world above was an oddity but in the end concerned no one. The PhD professors and curators had no interest in discovery. Few left their offices to visit the basement collections, let alone travel to sites in the field. The ones who did might visit for a day or two each year.

My disappointment with the world of science grew still and though I continued to work in the museum I began to take advantage of my superior’s disinterest. I came to work now armed with a flashlight. Like an archaeologist I traveled deep into the museum’s sub-basement in search of the stories these explorers left behind. Each day I ventured farther and farther back into my lost world. Without realizing it, my predecessors, these explorers, had left behind a Hansel and Gretel trail of crumbs. Deep within the museum's arcane tunnels they made me one of them.

As I blindly reached out ever further I opened up a new world. It’s a feeling you can never let go of, I believe that every explorer has felt it.