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I had a free-range childhood. We lived in town but with a cow, chooks, bees, and multiple veggie gardens so we could live self-sufficiently.

It's true that I had a bucolic, truly peaceful childhood, growing up in a house next to our family's orchard. We had a lot of books and art, but no electricity until I was eight years old. Since then, I have seen a lot of inner-city life, though.

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.

I grew up in the large house and the larger garden of my parents in Altenberg. They were supremely tolerant of my inordinate love for animals.

I was really active as a kid. I was outdoors constantly.

I grew up like Huck Finn, always outdoors, exploring, collecting frogs - there was space everywhere. I want my kids to experience that too. I love being outside.

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.

When I was growing up, and other people I knew were getting into trouble, I was somewhere in a deer stand or going to bed early so I could be up before dawn to hunt turkeys. My love of the outdoors kept me solid.

Living in a rural setting exposes you to so many marvelous things - the natural world and the particular texture of small-town life, and the exhilarating experience of open space.

Living in a small town, one of the keys to survival was your imagination.