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so many mentees. I’m honored to claim that for myself as well.

I understand that you recently took some time to hike the 2000-mile plus

Appalachian Trail. Can you share insights on the experience, why you decided to make the trek, what you got out of it and what you learned about yourself along the way?

I left a week after I retired from NOAA and started in Harpers Ferry, West Vir- ginia, which is about the halfway point and hiked north from there up to Mount

Katahdin in Maine and then, ? ipped back down to Harpers Ferry and ? n- ished southbound. So I just followed

Spring all the way up, and then ? ipped back down and followed the Fall all the way down into the south.

It’s sort of a whole lifestyle, home- less by choice, and you don’t have a lot of the amenities. My pack was pretty light, a 30-pound pack, but after climb- ing mountains with it, you really take a harder look at [your gear and ask] “Do

I really need this? I haven’t used it in a week. I think I could probably get by without it.” So I kept dropping weight and simplifying.

I think that process was valuable, to re- ally think about what’s important.

At NOAA I had a lot of people working for me, and I was a little bit of a public ? gure in my own little world. But once

I got out of the trail, I didn’t have any of that. So it was fun to start over [and ask]: “Who am I in this world?”

So I am a recovering scientist, and I did a little project along the way, where

I recorded a sound clip every hour at the top of the hour, a 15-second sound clip, which I then analyzed for the different frequency components and mapped it

SEND DATA up in a GIS with the help of some great

WIRELESSLY UNDERWATER folks. And that was a really neat oppor- tunity every hour, to just stop, listen and

AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT

TM

LUMA think. [Another great part is] there are

Wireless Optical people out there of all ages, really well

Communication :

Data Rate 10 Mbps integrated. The 60-year-olds were hang-

Modems :

Range 50 m ing out with the 22-year-olds, and it was :

Depth Rating 6’000 m https://hydromea.com just everybody doing this thing in a very :

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