There is something special about a quiet untouched forest that just pulls you into the moment. Something that no parks will ever be able to achieve. Isn't that what we're all searching for in life? To just be happy and content in the moment, to just be there in the "now"?

Straddling the top of the world, one foot in China and the other in Nepal, I cleared the ice from my oxygen mask, hunched a shoulder against the wind, and stared absently down at the vastness of Tibet.

But perhaps the greatest attraction of Mormonism was the promise that each follower would be granted an extraordinarily intimate relationship with God. Joseph taught and encouraged his adherents to receive personal communiqués straight from the Lord. Divine revelation formed the bedrock of the religion.

Antarctica has this mythic weight. It resides in the collective unconscious of so many people, and it makes this huge impact, just like outer space. It's like going to the moon.

He needed his solitude at times, but he wasn't a hermit. He did a lot of socializing. Sometimes I think it was like he was storing up company for the times when he knew nobody would be around.

I love being outdoors, being in the mountains and the desert, and my wife enjoys that too. That's one of the things that sustain our relationship.

Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often.