Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Ambassadorship in Training

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that everyone reading this has heard of the company Patagonia.  Right?  Cool, colorful clothes for winter sports or tropical endeavors, slim, athletic, tan people frolicking or kicking ass in rad places all over the planet.  It matters not whether you are perusing the catalogs that show up at your house or trolling the website, the images stay with you.  The underlying message: Don't you wish you were doing this while wearing this?

We all also know that Patagonia "isn't just about selling clothes" (yawn), they really care about the planet and the environment.  As much as we are lured into spending money on the garments we sees that we think we can't live without, we are also encouraged to do the right thing and pass them up for the good of the planet, because we all know that the first and biggest unsolvable problem facing our species is overpopulation, quickly followed by overconsumption.  No secrets or surprises there.

Let me interject here and now that I own a ton of Patagonia products.  I have been coveting their clothes since I first laid eyes on them, sometime in the early 90's, when I was new to Colorado and simply couldn't believe that this lifestyle had been here all along, I just hadn't gotten far enough West to stumble upon it.  Their clothes not only fit me well, they look darn good on me with the added bonus of keeping me warm and dry while I pursue all the outdoor endeavors I live for.  Plus some indoor ones, like yoga.  Do I sound like an ad?  Perhaps, but you will understand why in a moment.

What some of you may not know about Patagonia, unless you read their seasonal catalogs or really delve deep into their website, is that they have a small fleet of Ambassadors.  Click on this link to take a look at what the dealio is with these adventuresome people, and the profile comes quickly into focus: they are badasses in their respective fields.  Yes, I too was unaware that fly fishing has badass participants, but apparently it does.  In addition to being badasses, these people also appear to be in alignment with the Patagonia goal of lessening human impact on the planet.

I recently took some time to read all the women's bios and actually emailed Patagonia to ask: How does one become said Ambassador?  Are you selected?  Invited?  Do you have to apply?  If so, what are the criteria?

The gentleman who responded was loath to give me much more information other than repeatedly directing me to the Ambassador page on the site, which left me no choice but to form my own conclusions and here is what I came up with.

There is a category of Ambassador that is glaringly absent from that page full of climbers and skiers and snowboarders and surfers and trail runners and yes, even fly fishers for chrissakes: The Regular Old Working a Job Trying to Make a Living While Pursuing Your Passions and Raising Kids Ambassador.  Like, hmmm, let's just pick a random person here... me.  

Wouldn't it be nice if you had one physical activity you really excelled at, enough that Patagonia picked you to wear all their stuff for free and tell them and the world how much you like it?  Wouldn't it be nice if you traveled all over the world picking off unreal destinations to hone your skills and hang out with other badasses like you?  Yes, all of that would be super fun and really nice but the reality is, there are very very few people that live that lifestyle, at least not for very long.

The rest of us, and there are lots of The Rest Of Usses, are just living our little lives in our little houses in our little towns with our big mountains and big skies and big dreams.  And picking up our Patagonia catalogs from our little PO Boxes, leafing through them with a cup of peppermint tea and thinking, WTF?  Ambassador?  Really?  With a carbon footprint like that?  How about this for ambassadorship:

  • I work full-time at an office job.
  • I teach yoga one night a week.
  • I do a 3-hour yoga practice every Sunday.
  • I ride my bike, walk or take the biodiesel-fueled bus to the gondola to work.
  • I eat at my desk so I can ski or do yoga on my lunch break.
  • We hike until dark after work in the summer.
  • I probably read 20 books last year.
  • Johnny goes on a 2 hour bike ride or ski tour before he goes to work in the morning.
  • We each ski at least 90 days each winter.
  • We slept outside 30 nights last summer.  
  • We took 7 desert camping trips in the spring and fall.
  • We climbed 13 peaks last summer, all of them 12,000 - 14,000 feet tall.
  • We went to 3 music festival across the street from our house.
  • We eat almost every meal in, our favorite by far, is tacos.  Not sure how this relates.
And that is not counting all the stuff we do with the kids: picking mushrooms, picking raspberries, more camping and hiking and swimming....

You take a look at those Ambassadors' bios, and you see they are burning up fossil fuels all over the world, all year long.  But I think Patagonia is missing a huge sector of the Nature Lover's population that are just like me.  My accomplishments above aren't really that noteworthy when you look around a community like this and see how many other people are doing exactly what we are doing: working hard, but as little as possible, so we can maintain our lifestyle of maximizing every spare minute we have.  People like Abby who runs a bakery out of her house, has 3 kids, is a badass skier and mountain biker, then crushes all the rich unemployed moms in town at a foot race in Silverton.  Hilaree, who summited Everest one day and Lhotse the next, coming home with pneumonia to take her kids to festivals in the summer - wait, she's a North Face Athlete - dang it!  What about Mel, who ski tours in the morning, goes on the ski area with her son in the middle of the day, then goes home to do another ski tour before playing bass at a Solstice party and hot tubbing til 4 in the morning.  Badass?  You betcha.

My point is this: I think it's great that Patagonia has representative of their clothes and the lifestyles they love.  I think it's great that some people have found a way to just do what they love all the time, with a wealthy benefactor behind them.  Who wouldn't want to travel around the world surfing all day and wearing the newest bikinis from Patagonia?  I think there are far more people just like me, and better, who represent a much more realistic and attainable way of living.  

Perhaps the next category on the Ambassador page could be for people like me, and there are many, who are living simple lives with simple goals, balancing our needs with our husbands, our kids, our bosses and ourselves.

There I am, ensconced in Patagonia-wear.

I have been wearing your clothes for two decades, Patagonia, and I love them.  So please, think about it.  Whenever you want to grant me Ambassadorship, I will happily accept. Until then, I guess I will have to keep thumbing through the sale racks, and trying to maintain my role as domestic and wilderness and workforce badass - not easy with all this competition!

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