Donal Mountain

1. The older I get, the more my father becomes my biggest hero and my biggest inspiration. How hard he worked for us, how caring he is to all his friends, how much he loved he has, how able he is to get on with things, how cheery his big smile makes me.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmountain/1898278887/

2. My last name is Mountain and I’m 6′6″. Best coincidence ever. Having Mountain as a last name also makes me wonder what middle names I could give my children someday. Sunshine, Cloud, Rainbow. In school people would call me and my twin brother “twin peaks”, which is pure genius.

3. I have a twin brother. First questions people ask about this: are you identical (no, he has nicer hands, IMO); who was born first (he was, by 17 min); are you similar (in some ways, but in many we’re opposite); can you read each other’s minds (no – or at least I hope not!), were you close growing up? (yes, but we also had our fair share of fisticuffs — I cracked his head of a radiator when we were around five and then hit him in the eyebrow with a hockey stick, but I didn’t mean to Jim, I promise!).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmountain/300437969/

4. We were born in Zambia, so was our sister. I don’t remember much of it, as we left when I was 4 or so. Just fleeting memories like a lightning storm, orange soil, our dog called ginger, our tree house, my pet chameleon, learning to swim in the warm Indian ocean, the yellow renault car we had, the dangerous turtle in the schoolyard and the time someone fell into it. the tall building my dad worked in, and the pictures we’d drawn at school that hung on his wall. the orange seats on the long plane journey back to Ireland. The magic doors in the airport. The box of apples in the back of our uncle car when he picked us up and which we devoured, having never seen them before).

5. I like the work I do at Google helping design stuff millions of people use every day. It taps into one of the things I enjoy most: trying to understand things and organize them so they’re understandable by others. I find myself doing this outside of work too. I dork out thinking about things like road intersection design, airliner family classifications, newspaper typography, forms of government, moon phases. Finding patterns makes me happy.

6. Taking photos makes me happy. Learning new things makes me happy. Imagining things makes me happy.

7. I live in San Francisco, California. I’ve been here nearly four years, but I still feel like I just got here. I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of this city and have so much more to take in. If you’re the same, let’s go! Seriously.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmountain/2358818045/

8. The best advice I was ever given was to “do something amazing while you can”. I know how lucky I am but sometimes worry that I don’t plan my priorities and time well enough but then I remember that most of the best things that have happened to me weren’t planned that way at all.

9. When I was young I was in the Boy Scouts, but instead of teaching us how to tie knots, our leaders taught us useful life skills. Like how to make Irish Coffee (especially useful when you’ve just set up camp and want to make friends with your neighbors so they’re not to mad when you spend the whole night laughing and shouting and learning how to get drunk), how to make a petrol bomb (ok maybe not a useful skill, but fun), how to hide in the woods when there are people trying to hunt you down and throw you in the river, how to hitch hike back to town when you’re you’re lost in the Wicklow Mountains.

9. I can’t hold my drink.

10. Doing pretty much anything outdoors makes me happy — the beach, mountain biking, road biking, forests, snowboarding, jumping in the river, waking up in a tent, kayaking, scuba diving. I’d love to get better at rock climbing and surfing. I bought a wetsuit a while ago so I could go surfing, but mostly found it fun just jumping in and out of the waves. But then I jumped into in the wrong spot and felt the drag of the undertow. Haven’t been back in the water since, and don’t intend to again without a surfboard and a buddy.

11. I’ve known lots of different kinds of love but unconditional is my new favorite.

12. My favorite place in the entire world is Tanglewood, a 4H Learning Center it the woods of Maine. I worked there as an environmental educator for many summers and one amazing, life-changing fall. I spent the whole day working outside, having fun showing children the magical life in the forest and the river. I met some of the most beautiful people I know. I went to sleep with millions of brilliant thoughts on my mind, and became the person that I am.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmountain/561130193/

13. I drove across from Maine to California and back to Maine again.

14. I’m left-handed.

15. I went to university in Scotland to study Environmental Science but a few months into my degree and switched to Psychology, which remains one of the most interesting things I know about. My favorite part of psychology was animal behavior and evolutionary psychology. The idea of natural selection got me thinking about all kinds of things in new ways. How old the earth is, the generations that got us here, how lucky I am, how awesome the simplest piece of life is.

16. This also lead me to call bullshit on religion. My most rebellious act as a teenager was to write a letter to the Irish Times about how science is a better way to understand the world than religion. I was really surprised when they printed it. I think my parents were too, when they read it!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmountain/2063901793/

17. I think I went through a brief period of kleptomania when I was young.

18. I like that first day of the season when you go outside and notice for the first time the snap of winter or the new leaves coming out on the trees in spring, or the first day in the summer when you leave your jacket at home and notice it’s still bright at 8pm. I love looking at the night sky and I’ve have just realized it’s been a while since I last did that and how crucial it is that I fix that soon!

19. I cycled across Iowa last summer and didn’t get a single flat tire. A few weeks ago I rode a seven-person bike through silicon valley rush hour and up to the top of a mountain and back.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmountain/3253958786/

20. I love children’s books and am in the middle of very slowly writing / researching / photographing one but you can’t see it until it’s done!

21. I think contrast is what makes the world interesting. Traveling to places gives me that, but I also enjoy finding it everywhere in the details.

22. My first impressions are almost always off, which keeps things interesting.

23. I’m applying for my green card and really hope it goes smoothly.

24. Getting on a plane always excites me.

25. I’m still learning.