Some Stories
ENVIRONMENT/BUSINESS/SPORTS
A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. – Yvon Chouinard
For nearly eighty years, Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard has followed his own advice, pursuing sports adventures, business excellence, and environmental activism with equal fervor. Since 1950, he has captured the lessons and revelations he’s learned in articles and books, personal letters and poetry, introductions and eulogies.
In this fascinating inside look, Chouinard himself selected his favorites from years of reflection, all accompanied by illustrative photos, many never published before. The result is both more of Chouinard’s iconoclastic and provocative thinking, his skilled storytelling and sense of humor, and a picture of the evolution of his thoughts and philosophies.
With articles on sports, from falconry to fishing and climbing to surfing, with musings on the purpose of business and the importance of environmental activism, this very personal book is like sitting on the couch with this amazing man, flipping through his photo album as he tells the stories of his life.
Some Stories is an eclectic portrait of a unique life lived well. Yet the final pages of the book indicate that Chouinard will continue to challenge people, business, and the world. He presents the company’s new, simple but direct, mission statement, revised for the first time in twenty-seven years: “We are in business to save our home planet.” With it he emphasizes the urgency of the climate crisis then entreats every person’s obligation to reflect on, commit to, and act on this mission.
Yvon Chouinard Some Stories
Lessons from the Edge of Business and Sport
Patagonia publishes a select list of titles on wilderness, wildlife, and outdoor sports that inspire and restore a connection to the natural world.
Copyright 2019 Patagonia Works
Text © Yvon Chouinard
Photograph copyrights held by the photographer indicated in captions
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from publisher and copyright holders. Requests should be emailed to books@patagonia.com or mailed to:
Patagonia Books, Patagonia Inc.,
259 W. Santa Clara St., Ventura, CA 93001-2717
Hardcover edition
Printed in Canada on 100 percent postconsumer recycled paper
Editor – John Dutton
Art Director, Designer – Christina Speed
Production – Rafael Dunn
Creative Director – Bill Boland
Director of Books – Karla Olson
Photo Editors – Jenifer Ridgeway, Jane Sievert
Project Manager – Jennifer Patrick
Photo Archivist – Sus Corez
Creative Advisor – Jennifer Ridgeway
JACKET PHOTO FRONT: Yvon in the Black Dihedral, North America Wall, El Capitan, Yosemite. Tom Frost/Aurora
JACKET PHOTO BACK: Yvon Chouinard. Ventura, California. Tim Davis
ENDPAPERS PHOTO: The 1972 Chouinard Equipment catalog described Lost Arrows as “horizontal pitons incorporating simplicity of design, economy of material, high strength, and classic beauty.” Rick Ridgeway
Hardcover ISBN 978-1-938340-82-6
E-Book ISBN 978-1-938340-83-3
Library of Congress Control Number 2019930559
DEDICATION
To all my friends, past and present, who were a big part of these adventures.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A special thank you goes to longtime friend and Patagonia photography editor Jennifer Ridgeway, whose tireless work and creative eye made this book what it is.
Over the years I’ve had some badly needed help from various editors and I’d like to sincerely thank Charlie Craighead, John Dutton, Nora Gallagher, Vincent Stanley, and Dylan Tomine. Thank you also to Patagonia photo editor Jane Sievert for her work on this book.
Stories
Preface
North America Wall, Yosemite Valley
Lessons from the Edge
Southern California Falconry Club
Introduction to California Surfing and Climbing in the Fifties
Cathedral Rocks, Yosemite Valley
Letter to Dave and Ann Craft
Remember That Big Storm
The Master’s Apprentice
The North Wall of Mount Edith Cavell
Quarter Dome, North Face
Yosemite Valley, California
Modern Yosemite Climbing
Sentinel Rock: A New Direct North Wall Route
Personal Notes from the North America Wall
Muir Wall, El Capitan
Letter to Malinda Pennoyer
Patagonia
Fun Hogs
Doug Tompkins
Thoughts on Climbing in the Kaisergebirge
Coonyard Mouths Off
Das Tent
Letter to Ken Wilson
Flamingos, Patagonia
On Tump Lines
All That Glitters Isn’t Gold
Coonyard Mouths Off, Part II
Salsipuedes
Excerpts from Climbing Ice
My Life on Ice: Initiative, Boldness, Balance
Sandhill cranes, Nebraska
Zen Lessons
An Introduction to Glenn Exum
Memorial for Dick Pownal
Pinhead’s Progress
The Myth of Powder
Fiordo de las Montañas, Chile
One-Way Trip on the Clarks Fork
‘Opihi Man by Claire Chouinard and The Rest of the Story
Dear Mum
The Secret Weapon
Attack of the Killer Limpets
Sucker Cakes
Seaweed Salad
Eat da Bait!
Bad Day at Flat Rock
Further Adventures with the Atoll Man: A Month at Sea and on Land
Foreword to No Bad Waves
Dear Claire
A Miracle in Calcutta
Eulogy for Bruce Hill
We Lost a Chief – Doug Tompkins
Headwaters of Lago Inexplorado, Chile
Measuring Time
The Minestrone Hatch
Bhutan Brown Trout, Here Be Caddis
Bonefishing in the Bahamas
The Pack
A Good Skunking
Lessons from a Simple Fly
Hatchery fish being released into San Francisco Bay
Threats to Coldwater Fisheries
Coastal wolves, British Columbia
Why Voting Is Not a Waste of Time
Dear Mister President
Why a Tools Conference? Patagonia’s Tools for Grassroots Activists
12,000 young voters, Washington, DC
The Responsible Economy
Do Good
Our Values
Index
Preface
The Golden Age of a sport is when the most innovation in technique and equipment occurs, and I’ve been fortunate to have lived and participated in the Golden Age of many an outdoor sport: spearfishing, falconry, fly fishing, whitewater kayaking, telemark and backcountry skiing, ice climbing, and Yosemite big-wall climbing.
I don’t consider myself much of a writer, I’m more of a storyteller really. I’ve had a pretty rich, adventurous, and, so far, lucky life in which I’ve amassed quite a few stories that would be of interest to some people. That’s the reason for this book.
I’m a passionate reader, but I rarely read fiction. You have to be a l
ot more creative to write fiction. Fashion photography is way more difficult than landscape, art more difficult than illustration. Also, I prefer to watch documentary films.
In school, I was tasked with writing an essay titled “I, Why.” What a horror! I stared at my white sheet of paper for an hour trying to find a cornerstone to build on. But if you tell me to write a five-hundred-word essay on what I ate for breakfast, no problem.
I’ve tried to live a simple life focused neither on the past nor future, but on the present. Admitting to myself that I’m basically a simple person, I’ve tried to keep my words and sentences simple.
I’ve found that I get a lot of creative satisfaction from breaking the rules in sport and business. Plus, it’s a lot easier than conforming and, in the end, leads to better stories.
Yvon on the North America Wall, El Capitan, Yosemite. 1964. Tom Frost/Aurora
Jumaring under the Great Roof, North America Wall, Yosemite. Tom Frost/Aurora
Fifteen-year-old Yvon with an immature red-tailed hawk, Burbank, California. Yvon Chouinard Collection
Lessons from the Edge
First published in Extreme Landscape: The Lure of Mountain Spaces by Bernadette McDonald, National Geographic Society, 2002. Also, much of this material appeared in Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard, Penguin Books, first edition 2006, updated edition 2016.
When I was seven, our family sold our house in the French-speaking town of Lisbon, Maine, and auctioned off all our possessions. The six of us piled into the Chrysler and drove to California. The day after we arrived in Burbank, I was enrolled in public school. Being the smallest boy in class, and unable to speak English, I did the logical thing. On the third day of school, I ran away.
I eventually went back, but ever afterward I remained at the edge of things. Before the other kids in my neighborhood were allowed to cross the street on their own, I was bicycling seven or eight miles to a lake on a private golf course, where I would hide in the willows and fish for bluegills and bass. Later I discovered Griffith Park and the Los Angeles River, where I spent every day after school gigging frogs, trapping crawdads, and hunting cottontails with my bow and arrow.
I didn’t take part in any of the usual activities of high school. I remember math class was an opportunity to practice breath holding so that on the weekends, I could freedive deeper to catch the abundant abalone and lobster off the Malibu coast. A few of us misfits started a falconry club where we used falcons and hawks for hunting.
Rappelling down to falcon aeries led to learning to climb, which led to trips to Wyoming at the age of sixteen to climb Gannett Peak, the highest mountain in the Wind River Range. Every year thereafter was spent climbing mountains, kayaking, and fishing rivers. During some of those years I slept 200 nights in a sleeping bag. In fact, I resisted buying a tent until I was over forty. I preferred to sleep under the stars or, in storms, under a boulder or tucked beneath the branches of an alpine fir. I particularly liked sleeping in a hammock hanging from a rock wall on multiday climbs.
We liked the fact that climbing rocks and icefalls had no economic value for society.
My passion for climbing mountains led to earning a living working as a blacksmith—forging pitons, ice axes, and other tools. I never intended for this craft to become a business, but every time my partner Tom Frost and I returned from the mountains, our heads were spinning with new ideas for improving the existing tools. Our guiding principle of design was a quote from the aviator and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.” Quality control was always foremost in our minds because if a tool failed, it could kill someone.
All winter I forged gear. For the rest of the year, I continued to lead a counterculture life on the fringes of society—living on fifty cents a day on a diet of oatmeal, potatoes, and canned cat food; camping all summer in an old incinerator in the abandoned CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) camp in the Tetons of Wyoming. In the spring and fall I would climb the granite walls of Yosemite Valley. We were the “Valley Cong,” living like guerillas in the nooks and boulders behind Camp 4.
We liked the fact that climbing rocks and icefalls had no economic value for society. We were rebels from the consumer culture of our parents. Businessmen were “grease balls” and corporations were the source of all evil. The natural world was our home. Our heroes were Muir, Thoreau, Emerson, Gaston Rébuffat, and Hermann Bühl. We were living on the edges of the ecosystem—adaptable, resilient, and tough. What didn’t kill us made us stronger. We also grew smarter.
Grinding away at the Ventura shop. Tom Frost/Aurora
I learned to appreciate simplicity. Management is the art of organizing complexity. You shouldn’t try to solve complex problems with more complexity.
Of course, every winter I returned to my business, even if I didn’t call it that. Later on, we applied the same philosophy of simplicity of design and reliability to the production of climbing clothing. The best products are the simplest. Our customers appreciated our “hand-forged” Stand Up Shorts, rugby shirts, and corduroy knickers. It took me twenty years of being in business before I would admit that I was a businessman—and would probably be one for the rest of my life.
Tom and Dorene Frost, Tony Jessen, Dennis Hennek, Terry King, Yvon Chouinard, Merle, and Davey Agnew at the Skunkworks in Ventura, California. 1966. Tom Frost
The values learned from a life in nature, from climbing and other risk sports, could also be applied to business. In the practice of Zen archery, you forget about trying to achieve the goal—that is, hitting the bull’s-eye. Instead, you focus on all of the individual movements. You practice your stance, reach back, and pull an arrow out of the quiver, notching it on the string. You match your breathing to the release of the arrow. When you perfect all the elements of shooting an arrow, it can’t help but go into the bull’s-eye. Climbing mountains, too, is a process. How you climb a mountain is more important than getting to the top.
The process to perfection is through simplification. When TM Herbert and I made the first ascent of a route on El Capitan, which we later named the Muir Wall, we studied the route from below, calculated how many days it would take, and took just enough equipment and supplies. Ten days later, we reached the top with no water, food, or bolts left. We knew our abilities, had accurately calculated the risk, and then pulled it off. Later, climbers would solo the route, free climb it, do speed ascents. Each generation of climbers has evolved physically and mentally so that equipment becomes less necessary. When the best speed climbers do the 3,000-foot Nose route on El Capitan, they no longer need haul bags or Gore-Tex because they are down by lunch; they may do Half Dome and maybe a couple more walls before the day is over.
Living a life close to nature has also taught me about responsibility. No animal is so stupid and greedy as to foul its own nest—except the human animal. Ten years ago, the prestigious Worldwatch Institute reported, “If growth proceeds along the lines of recent decades, it is only a matter of time before global systems collapse under the pressure.” Recently, in its State of the World 2000 report, Worldwatch had this to say: “We hoped that we could begin the next century with an upbeat report, one that would show the Earth’s health improving. But unfortunately, the list of trends we were concerned with then—shrinking forests, eroding soils, falling water tables, collapsing fisheries, and disappearing species—has since lengthened to include rising temperatures, more destructive storms, dying coral reefs, and melting glaciers.”
We are destroying the very systems on which our lives depend. We continue to delude ourselves into thinking that technology is the answer. But technology is a limited tool. It creates industries, but eliminates jobs. It cures disease, but doesn’t make us healthier. It frees us from some chores, but so far has led to a net loss of leisure time. There is a downside to every technological advancement. All tec
hnology has really done is to allow more of us to reside on Earth. Because we are all part of nature, we need to look to nature for the solutions.
Because we are all part of nature, we need to look to nature for the solutions.
To act responsibly, we need to make some fundamental changes. We have to work toward becoming a sustainable society. Planning and decisions need to be made on the premise that we’re all going to be around for a long time. The Iroquois Nations extended their planning for seven generations into the future. Such planning would preclude natural disasters like clear-cutting the last of the old-growth forest or destroying rivers with dams that will silt up in twenty years. As a businessman, if I really believe in the rightness of such planning, then my own company, which is dependent on nonrenewable resources to make consumer goods, must also do the “right thing.”
When I think of sustainability, I think back to when I was a GI in Korea. There, I saw farmers pouring night soil on paddies that had been in continuous use for 3,000 years. Each generation of farmers had left the land in as good or better condition as when they received it. Contrast this with modern agribusiness, which wastes two bushels of topsoil to produce one bushel of corn, and pumps groundwater at a rate 25 percent faster than it’s being replenished. A responsible government encourages farmers to be good stewards of the land and to practice sustainable agriculture. But why should only the farmer or the fisherman or forester have the responsibility to see that Earth remains habitable for future generations of humans and other wild things?
Half Dome, Yosemite. Mikey Schaefer
Camping in the Tetons. “I didn’t own a tent until I was in my forties—and that’s not my sissy air mattress.” 1958. Ken Weeks
My business has taken a close look at its own impact on nature. We do an ongoing environmental assessment of all our business processes, including a “life cycle” analysis of our products—from material source, to manufacturing, to shipping, to consumer care, to ultimate disposal. Then, once you have taken the trouble to learn what you’re really doing, you have to act upon that knowledge. We switched to 100 percent organic cotton, partnered with bluesign® to manage our dyes and chemicals used in our products, and dramatically increased the use of recycled materials in our line. We replaced paper cups with permanent ware at our offices. We use energy-efficient lightbulbs throughout our buildings. We use 100 percent postconsumer recycled paper in our catalogs, marketing materials, and for office purposes. We use reclaimed lumber and source local materials to build our retail stores as much as possible.