A few years after that first visit, I applied for a job in Yosemite.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I spent two summers working at Camp Curry and at Yosemite Lodge as a waiter. It gave me a chance to really be there every day - to hike up to Vernal Falls or Nevada Falls. It just took me really deep into it. Yosemite claimed me.
I used to take my mother to Yosemite. When I turned 14, I got my driver's license, and that's where she'd want to go, so I'd go take her there for two weeks.
After graduation, I took a job with Manufacturers Hanover Trust in software development. I don't think I was there more than a month.
I applied to a few conservatories. I was sure that I wouldn't get in, and I didn't plan to go to N.Y. But then I got into Juilliard.
For about a year, I just didn't know what to do. I did laboring jobs, working in the docks, construction sites.
After I graduated in Vancouver, I had been working on a book about war-affected children and land mines with the foreign minister - he was working at a place on campus and hired me. I then got a job as a Human Rights and Refugees Officer in London, and I loved working there.
Yosemite Valley is like a tourist zoo. It's shameful.
I had a career for 25 years in Australia before I ever came to the United States.
My actual first summer internship was in the design department of Clinique.
The first job I ever had was right here in San Francisco with Southern Pacific.