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I had one of the most outdoorsy childhoods you could imagine. I basically lived in the woods until I was 13. My dad and I built a huge treehouse in our backyard in Chesterfield, about 30 feet in the air. And we'd vacation on an island in Michigan, where I hunted a deer that we ate.

My parents were brutal to each other, so I slept in the basement by an old coal-fired furnace. I became a street kid. Occasionally, I'd live with aunts or uncles, then I'd run away to live in the woods, trapping and hunting game to survive. The wilderness pulled at me; still does.

As a kid, I was just led out in the morning to go spend my day with my friends and just run in the woods. And I'd only come home to eat or when I was thirsty.

The happiest days of my youth were when my brother and I would run through the woods and feel quite safe.

I was on the beach every summer. That was the pleasant part of my childhood because we were right by the sea. We'd take a picnic, and I'd spend hours in the water until I turned blue. You couldn't get me out of there.

I spent a lot of time outdoors as a kid.

I was blessed to grow up in really interesting times and to go back to a home where I was very safe.

I used to love wildlife as a kid and being outside in the garden and the woods and the field and that stuff.

Growing up, I cooked in the house, and when I cooked, everyone would sit down and eat, and it was just kind of the way I connected with my family.

I practically lived in the woods when I was a kid, avoiding grown-ups and my dysfunctional family, pretending I was half-wolf, a feral child who napped in nests made out of ferns, ate wild blueberries, and wove sticks and feathers into her hair.