My son Travis

   “I have been blessed with as fine a son as anyone could ask for. Travis Matthiessen Bennett came into this world on 29 April 1991. His mom Liz’s friend and birth helper PJ and I both, by sheer coincidence, were wearing Jaguar t-shirts on the night he was born, that I had designed for a fund-raiser a year or so earlier. A book we found that has token animals for each common surname stated that Jaguar was the animal for the name Matthiessen, which we took from our friend, the great nature writer, Peter Matthiessen.  Travis climbed his first stairs on the Temple of the Jaguar at the Mayan ruins of Tikal. I have told him he is going to show me my wild Jaguar someday! He says he will.

   Travis has been going to be a paleontologist (dinosaur digger) since he was 2 years old. “Oh, it’s just a phase all kids go through,” everyone would say. They don’t know Travis! He has never wavered from this goal. Although only 12 years old he is already planning to do his graduate work at University of Montana with the famous John Horner. When he’s not talking video games, we have had some great conversations on such subjects as predator to prey ratios and why the dinos really went extinct.”