The Newtonian underpinnings of my becoming a scientist

One of my earliest memories is of capturing bees foraging on dandelions in a grassy field behind our student housing complex at University of Utah where my dad was going to school. The memories are indistinct and it is hard to form into a visual picture such that the details come clearly and vividly to mind, but I can recapture the delightful attractiveness of the day. The sun was out and the memory of the colors discloses not only their usual visual hues, but carries an affective mood and feeling that seems to define for me the long summers of childhood when to play and explore was what it meant to be. I must have been about four or five and we were in back of a long building with blue wood siding. The greenness of the lawn, the light blue of the unsullied sky and the billowy clouds are more distinct than anything else in my memories of those early years. We captured bees. I remember how excited I was to actually have one these little creatures in the glass jar I was holding in my hand! I put my ear up to its side and could hear the loud buzzing of the tiny prisoner proclaiming its confusion and displeasure. I knew bees could sting, but I have no memory of fear or apprehension about these bees—just a sense of triumph, delight, and elation. I suppose that is why the memory sticks so clearly after a lifetime. The images have degraded somewhat. I remember the bees in the jar. I remember I was not alone and that someone was there with me or maybe even a group of people. I remember the colors. I remember the grass and the dandelions. I remember the freedom and gladness of watching the bee soar from the jar, make a slow small circle, it’s legs laden with pollen and dangling loosely from its heavy body, and then flying home. These images are confused and hard to bring up, of course, and have likely been reconstructed with bits and pieces of other memories as memories are wont to do. But the mood! The feelings of delight and magic are so clear, so deep, that when I look back on that afternoon, I cannot help but long for such unassuming clarity of purpose and such untainted joy. I hope I get to be a child again. It was in that jar of bees that a scientist was born.