Illustration by Kate T. Williamson

"It's like climbing to outer space. There are millions of undiscovered creatures in every nook and cranny. Some are two feet long, some smaller than a raindrop. At 165 feet up, I'm the first to see rain on the horizon. There are 1,000 shades of green, and I usually can't see the forest floor. Sometimes I stay overnight, and it's too much fun to sleep. The tree's strong architecture is very protecting. The swaying lulls me like I'm a baby. At night the insects chew and chirp—it's a symphony by Mother Nature, Times Square in the forest." — Tropical rainforest canopy biologist and conservationist Margaret D. Lowman, PhD, who began taking her two children up with her into the treetops when they were 4 and 6 years old

Won $1,000,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

"When the million-dollar question popped up onscreen—Who posed as the farmer for the artist Grant Wood in his painting American Gothic?—I knew the answer before I even saw the four choices (it was Wood's dentist). At that point I knew I had won. I felt hot and started to squirm. There was no timer and they always encouraged us to talk our way through the answers, but I couldn't stretch it out any longer. I had to spit it out. Meredith Vieira and I both started screaming. Tears streamed from our eyes. We jumped from our chairs and gave each other a big bear hug. Confetti was flying, 600 people in the audience were going crazy; it was pure pandemonium. Later, as I drove home alone from the Tulsa airport in my dented Saturn, I screamed, 'I won a million dollars!' I'm still living in the same three-bedroom house and still teach at the same school. But now I can indulge my two vices—shoes and books—and buy pizza for my students." — Nancy Christy, a single mother of two who teaches eighth-grade English at Carver Middle School in Tulsa, Oklahoma

Argued your first case before the Supreme Court?