Graduation year: 2015
Hometown: Great Falls, Virginia
Major: Anthropology
Relationship Status: On the market
This week’s Campus Celebrity is Mickey Mittermeier. He is known among students for not only his creation of Free Tree Climbing and Tarzan obsession, but also as being one of the most well-travelled students on campus. The barefoot adventurer just recently travelled to his 70th country. Her Campus caught up with Mickey to talk about his travels and future plans. Mickey met me this week for an interview and graciously invited me into his room. His space clearly showed just how much travel and exploring had influenced his life growing up, every shelf was filled with various artifacts from numerous countries. For those of you who have met Mickey, you know that he is very enthusiastic when he gets on the topic of travelling and experience. According to him, “[Travelling] is a beautiful addiction.”
Obviously you are not someone short on cultural experience, what would you say is your favorite one?
My favorite cultural experience was hunting with Kalahari Bushman from the Xaixai village in the kalahari desert in Botswana. They are one of the oldest living cultures in the world and they still maintain most of their cultural practices, they are hunter-gatherers, live as nomads, they are hard to get to and one of the main studies of Anthropologists. I went on the trip with my dad and we were leaving the expedition.
With 70 countries already explored, what is the next big place on your list?
This December I’m going to be taking a trip to Cameroon and Gabon on another donor trip with my dad to look for Lowland Gorillas and visit with the Pygmies, who are a tribe of smaller people, they adapted to be smaller and stouter because of the rainforest they live in. Hopefully for winter term I am going to Micronesia and will see the islands of Palau and Yap Island.
If you could teach people one thing that your travels have taught you, what would it be?
Never let fear of the unknown dictate your experiences. Don’t be afraid to experience new things. Go out and do as much as you can, and see as much as you can and experience as much as you can because life’s too short.
Do you ever plan to settle down in one specific place, or do you hope to have your home be wherever you adventure to next?
I do eventually see myself settling down but I always do see travel and adventure as an integral part of my life. If I do settle down in the future it will be with a girl as crazy and passionate about travel as I am.