My father helped a lot, he was a chemical engineer and his work took him to a lot of mines. And though Wisconsin isn't Idaho/Washington in terms of geological interest, there's a lot of glacial period features. My real interest got piqued when I went the wrong way in my grad school career at Berkeley (you can't get a Ph.D. in chemistry if you're not very good at math). But while I was slumming in IT to realign my career in a paycheck-oriented direction, I took a few courses in geochemistry, especially geochemical cycling, and got really interested. In case anyone wonders why I am environmentally-minded, there you go. I was originally interested in climate change that took place over thousands and millions of years, and the natural "extension" is to be interested, and at times concerned, about what might currently be happening.