Remember: If You Take Bivouac Equipment Along,

During The Sixties, All The Risk-type Sports Were Very Popular, Because Everybody Was Rebelling Against Their Parents, Or Rebelling Against The Whole System. But Those Days Are Over. This Is The Day Of Conservatism.

I Took A Dozen Of Our Top Managers To Argentina, To The Windswept Mountains Of The Real Patagonia, For A Walkabout. In The Course Of Roaming Around Those Wild Lands, We Asked Ourselves Why We Were In Business And What Kind Of Business We Wanted Patagonia To Be. A Billion-dollar Company? Okay, But Not If It Meant We Had To Make Products We Couldn't Be Proud Of. And We Discussed What We Could Do To Help Stem The Environmental Harm We Caused As A Company. We Talked About The Values We Had In Common, And The Shared Culture That Had Brought Everyone To Patagonia, Inc., And Not Another Company.

Going Back To A Simpler Life Based On Living By Sufficiency Rather Than Excess Is Not A Step Backward.

But I'm Really Trying To Run This Company Like It Is Going To Be Here A Hundred Years From Now. That's What's Important.

The Whole Purpose Of Climbing Something Like Everest Is To Effect Some Sort Of Spiritual And Physical Gain. But If You Compromise The Process You’re An Asshole When You Start Out And An Asshole When You Get Back.