A Wild Idea

by Jonathan Franklin

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  Kayaking in the remote woods, sleeping in tents, sharing stories around the campfire, and enjoying a can of beans heated in the fire was paradise for the Do Boys. Beyond the edge of civilization, they found a connection to a lifestyle they each needed. The tiger trip was a celebration of the wild. Out in the woods, life slowed to a natural rhythm. Running water was their soundtrack.

  The friends floated down the river, quiet as they listened for bears and fished for a dinner and then cooked together. Tompkins often broke the silence, annoying the others. “Doug would paddle behind me,” said Brokaw. “He would be beating my eardrums about You’re not doing enough on radical environmentalism, and I finally turned around and said, Doug, goddammit, I’m out here to get away from that, not have more of it in my ear. He said, Okay, okay. I get it. Then ten minutes later he started up again.”

  As they wrapped the kayak expedition, the men needed a ride back to civilization. Their only option was a daily train that passed near the forest, late at night. The 11:00 p.m. train had sold out nine months earlier, but Russian fixers had arrangements with the train crew that meant, ticket or no ticket, the highest-paying customers rode the train.

  The Do Boys paid up, then disguised themselves with handsewn clothes and thick jackets, and followed precise instructions: when the train stops, throw the gear aboard. Under no circumstances ask for permission. Don’t speak English. Don’t worry about the feisty babushka with gold teeth, she was part of the team. The Do Boys boarded the train without tickets, swapping furtive glances and communicating in rudimentary sign language. The ruse worked and they arrived by morning in the city, where their guide Dimitri had insisted that the Americans come to meet his family, living nearby in Vladivostok.

  Foreigners were not allowed into Vladivostok. Under Russian law it was a “restricted military city” and off limits to foreigners, and especially journalists. “Brokaw went crazy. He thought he was going to be arrested in a highly publicized incident,” laughed Jib Ellison. Dimitri knew the local greasers and fixers who maintained the rusty state apparatus, so he took his guests to a flea market and bought each man a new outfit. Every Do Boy was given a Russian winter fur hat so large it could be pulled down, past his eyes. “Just pretend you are kind of drunk,” Dimitri insisted.

  Sneaking into Vladivostok without visas, Dimitri took his clandestine visitors to his tiny little apartment where they feasted with the family, sang folk songs, and collapsed asleep on the floor. When they recovered from their vodka-forged friendship, they visited the offices of the Pacific Institute, and went on a sightseeing jaunt through an area off limits to foreigners and even to many Russians.

  “There’s some old Russian submarine pulled into the port,” recalled Ridgeway. “It’s a weekend, pedestrians everywhere. And the submarine is open. Dimitri said, ‘Perfect, we’re going to tour the submarine!’ Brokaw is really shitting at this point, because we’re now touring a submarine in a city we’re not supposed to be in, dressed like Russians. Of course, Tompkins thinks this is perfect. He is in heaven, because we are breaking every rule.”

  Tompkins was exhilarated from his time in the wild, but he was certain that Russia was not a place to invest. Though enchanted by the thriving forests, he wouldn’t be buying one. The corrupt practices of post-Soviet capitalism involved bribes, mafia, and too many dubious characters. Tompkins knew that forest land in South America was just as cheap, and in Chile, he believed, the locals played by the rules.

  Chapter 10

  Two Exotic Birds in a Strange Land

  A traveler to Patagonia, a region of legendary wildness and beauty, will find the experience transformative. Here is a landscape of unparalleled natural treasures, one of the last great strongholds of wild nature.

  —DOUG TOMPKINS

  Three weeks camping in the Siberian wilderness reignited the passion inside Tompkins. He returned to Chile more determined to build his own shrine to nature—a 500,000-acre park in the wilds of Patagonia. “This will be the largest private nature reserve in the world,” he told his young assistant Daniel Gonzalez. The opportunity was fleeting, he stressed, as the forces of development were flattening forests in British Columbia, Madagascar, Indonesia, and Brazil. Many of Chile’s native forests were already gone, he warned.

  Surveying the maps of southern Chile, Tompkins imagined ways to “monkey wrench” the lumber and chip industries who planned to buy the forest. He was certain he could never stop the forces of industrial development, but he was equally convinced he could buy time.

  Tompkins helped Gonzalez build a command center. Like pioneering explorers, they gathered every map they could find as they sketched their plans for a massive park across these unknown lands. They were given free use of a small office above the Esprit store in Santiago. Juan Enrique Abadie, the local Esprit concessionaire, adored Tompkins and was delighted to share resources with the brand’s legendary founder. In their small office Gonzalez and Tompkins imagined Eden. The apex predator in these lands were muscular mountain lions known as pumas. They weighed up to 120 pounds and feasted on native deer and imported sheep. Tompkins sketched out a park half the size of Yosemite. He understood the beauty of asking for the impossible. He named his plan Pumalín Park and said it would be the largest private conservation initiative in the world.

  Rick Klein, who had been the spark for Doug’s initial interest in Chilean forestry conservation, watched as Tompkins appropriated it. Klein’s wild idea of protecting ancient forests in Patagonia was blooming, and, even though Doug left him completely on the sidelines, he was ecstatic. Klein jokingly called Pumalín Park “Doug’s Ego System.”

  Tompkins thrived on the logistical challenges. Why not put together a park, he strategized, by buying land from absentee landowners holding title to untouched forests? Like the first descent of an unknown whitewater rapid or kayaking over a waterfall without knowing what lay below, the idea thrilled him. As his vision expanded, so too the wall of maps in his makeshift office, where Tompkins hung a sign that echoed his edicts from the Esprit HQ—No Detail Is Small.

  When Gonzalez found a property for sale, he gave Tompkins the coordinates, and the two climbed into a small plane, flew down, and explored. Tompkins was now an experienced pilot with thousands of flight hours. He felt comfortable as he landed on country roads and bounced across remote cow pastures. Once on the ground, Tompkins rustled up a local cowboy, loaded packhorses, stuffed food and sleeping bags in a burlap sack, and rode into the backcountry on a horseback trip that might last two days, or maybe six.

  “He could go so extreme, so comfortably. He didn’t care that life had changed radically. I think he had had enough of the other life,” said Marci Rudolph, who had also made a radical switch from working at Esprit in San Francisco to living in Patagonia. “I couldn’t believe that Doug, someone who loved eating out at nice restaurants and who thought that San Francisco was the greatest city in the world, and who traveled all over the world for business, now is hunkering down in the south,” she recalled. “He didn’t care about nice champagne; he didn’t care about food. Everything switched. We did salad plus fish, if one of the guys caught one, or if not, it’s let’s open a can of tuna. . . . I don’t think Doug changed. I don’t think Doug became a different person. I think he took all that energy he had and put it into Chile.”

  Tompkins imagined Pumalín Park having concentric rings of protection. The terrain was so rough and the rainfall so persistent that few humans even tried to live in the zone. Keeping humans out was not difficult; in fact, it might be more of a challenge to entice like-minded settlers to live in the rainy Reñihue watershed. Doug described to Marci his plans to design a pioneer village, a low-tech (and at times no-tech) manual-labor-based economy where friendly neighbors collectively built fences, cleared away stumps, and devoted their lives to sustainable agriculture practices that cultivated, rather than mutilated, the land near the proposed park.

  Tompkins prioritized wild animals and native flora
but was practical enough to realize that small, human settlements were his best chance to create a long-term buffer zone. He imagined settling a family in each major watershed—they could live off the land and monitor the environmental health of the ecosystem. “We’ll teach bee-keeping and how to market the honey,” Tompkins proclaimed in a letter to colleagues back in the states. “The idea is to encourage things that break them out of the cycle of poverty, get them over that desperate line of survival.”

  As his land holdings grew across Chile, stretching from the Pacific Ocean all the way up the Andes to the border with Argentina, Tompkins owned land that chopped Chile in two halves. Tompkins viewed this as a random by-product of his larger conservation dreams. But Chilean authorities felt the nation’s sovereignty was threatened. In a costly tactical error, Tompkins blithely assured admirals and generals not to worry, he was going to gift all the land back to the Chilean government for free. He just needed more time to put together his massive plans for a national park, Tompkins assured the befuddled military leaders.

  In a country emerging from the dark lies and manipulations of a secretive military government, few believed that an altruistic gringo had arrived to invest $150 million and then deliberately gift it all away, no strings attached. Chile had been deprived of nearly every Earth Day celebration from 1973 to 1990 as military curfew and repression kept a lid on most forms of social organizing. Activists had been specifically targeted. By the early 1990s environmental awareness was just emerging, and repeated promises by Tompkins to save the forests and protect the deer felt like a weak cover story for something far more nefarious.

  “I don’t think anybody believed him,” remarked General Juan Emilio Cheyre, commander in chief of the Chilean Army at the time. “No one believed him because it was so strange. What do you mean, he’s going to donate the lands? Wasn’t it the other way around? Wasn’t he just buying more land? It was a verbal promise, outside of protocol, and it wasn’t something with a firm date, with details and a handover plan. There was no real notion that he would really donate the lands.”

  Tompkins was ignorant of the decades-long history of property battles in the region where he’d set up. Villagers were long accustomed to being swindled, abused, and run off the land by Chile’s ruling aristocracy—often working in cahoots with powerful politicians. “When we came into that region, there was already a deep frustration from colonos [early settlers] toward the government and toward what they perceived as outsiders,” said Gonzalez, who traveled often with Doug into the wild to meet with locals. “For thirty years they had been promised title to their lands, ownership to their lands, and nothing had happened. We were just one more actor in what was already a frustrating situation for locals. In many ways, we were perceived as a threat.”

  “No one was against his conservation plans. Who could be against a person who wants to preserve nature, protect forests and waterways?” suggested Hector Muñoz, then a high-level official in the Ministry of the Interior. “The problem was the magnitude of his philosophy. We found out he was a follower of Deep Ecology, a believer in biocentrism, which means that nature comes first, and that humans are just another element of nature and that all beings have the same rights. He even argued with me that rocks have the same rights as human beings! That’s when we began to understand his ideological character; this man was absolutely convinced of his beliefs. He had an incredible fanaticism, and deeply held convictions.”

  Tompkins was oblivious to the enmity his conservation plans generated. Fresh from upending the world of teen fashion and flush with cash, he spent little time pondering what might go wrong. Looking forward, he was the first to admit there was no master plan. He also knew that to pull off a dream like creating the world’s largest private park, he needed a team. At Esprit his successes were facilitated by a small group of invisible allies—a loyal cadre including his exceptional business manager, Debbie Ryker, and Dolly Ma, his longtime logistics manager who, like an air traffic controller, sorted a steady stream of incoming ideas. Ryker and Ma managed Tompkins’s post-Esprit financial affairs from a small office in San Francisco that functioned as a watchdog operation for his wild ideas. But what he most lacked was a dedicated co-conspirator. And it was his best friend, Yvon Chouinard, who introduced him to the woman who became the love of his life.

  In early 1990, Yvon Chouinard needed a break. For two decades he had guided the Patagonia clothing company with a passion similar to the enthusiasm he brought to ice-climbing ascents and kayaking adventures. Patagonia’s guarantee of durable, well-designed clothing had earned the trust of a vast marketplace of loyal customers. Annual sales soared from $20 million in 1985 to $100 million in 1990. But Patagonia was no cash cow. The company reinvested profits in building a stronger company and also donated millions to grassroots environmental groups fighting to protect their community.

  Chouinard needed to transfer day-to-day operations to a new management team, so he flew them to the tiny village of El Calafate, not far from where he had been trapped in a snow cave with Tompkins thirty-three years earlier on the expedition that had inspired him to name his company Patagonia. In El Calafate, he knew he could evoke a love of the wild that so inspired not just the company’s name but its commitment to environmental activism.

  Kris McDivitt, Patagonia’s CEO, was leading the transition effort for the company. The thirty-seven-year-old was a former ski racer. Lithe, athletic, and determined, Kris carried the physique and energy of a long-distance runner. She was one of the original seven Patagonia employees, and as longtime CEO had built the Patagonia brand while inspiring a deep loyalty from customers and employees that was the envy of the industry.

  On the last day of the Patagonia management retreat, Doug flew over the Andes, landed in El Calafate, and settled in for lunch with his best friend. When Doug arrived, Yvon happened to be sitting next to Kris. The Patagonia Inc. team had finished their informal agenda and were preparing for a flight back to California the next day. Doug sat down next to Kris in a rustic backwater restaurant, slapped her on the back, and proposed, “Hey, kiddo. How are you doing?” He quipped, “Why don’t you fly back to the United States with me?”

  Kris refused the offer. Doug insisted. “You’re just going to fly back commercially,” he teased.

  When she continued to reject his advances, he asked if she could bring a bag of books back to California for him. She agreed, thinking it was a small kayak bag. Doug came back with a sixty-pound duffel bag of books. As she later recalled, “We both knew that the bag of books was really the motivation to be in touch again.”

  Kris viewed Doug as a maverick, a brilliant visionary, and the best friend of her lifelong boss Yvon. Kris had bumped into Doug over the years. Her former husband had climbed with him in the Trango Tower area of northern Pakistan, and she was well aware of his reputation both as a playboy and as a charismatic business leader.

  Kris was one of the few people in the world who knew Yvon as well as Doug. A native of Southern California, she began packing orders and handling paperwork with Yvon when she was just a seventeen-year-old. From her beginnings working for Yvon in the mailroom, back at the climbing equipment company that was known as Chouinard Equipment and when she was known as a “surfer girl,” Kris showed a talent for building teams. She was brash, self-confident, and loyal to Yvon. She steadily rose higher in the company as the company expanded. Her brother, Roger McDivitt, became CEO.

  When Roger left the company, Kris was told to take over. Suddenly and by accident, Kris was in charge of Patagonia. Given her absolute lack of management experience, she cold-called bankers in the Ventura area, explaining, “I’ve been given this company to run, I don’t want to destroy it, can you help me figure out what to do?” Her unorthodox manner and charm worked. Quickly she took the reins of Patagonia. Her uncanny marketing and leadership within the growing Patagonia team quickly led to her becoming a trusted executive.

  Her friendship with Yvon helped filter the ever-changing idea
s he’d bring back to Ventura. Kris knew how to implement the good ideas and ignore the wacky ones, which (over time) led Yvon to refine his more outlandish ideas. They were a dynamic team, and among the employees of the privately held corporation Kris was the only one ever given stock and partial ownership of Patagonia.

  Kris earned a reputation as an adroit businesswoman with a knack for handling the details of Yvon’s sprawling empire and covering for his extended absences. She laughed at herself and cultivated a sense of humor. When Chouinard insisted that she buy for the company a bizarre shoe style he’d found in Japan, known as Reef Walkers, McDivitt refused. When he insisted, she wrote in dark ink on the beams above her desk: “My boss made me buy 20,000 pairs of Reef Walkers.” And she had Chouinard sign the ceiling. The shoes never sold, but the incident, and the graffiti, were etched into company lore.

  For weeks after their chance meeting in Argentina, Doug pursued Kris. Repeatedly he invited her to dinner. She diplomatically swatted away all his entreaties. Doug tried repeatedly to convince Kris to come up from Ventura but she was reluctant. And engaged. Their schedules overlapped, however, long enough for dinner at Doug’s San Francisco house. Entering his home, she was impressed by the art, the style, and the food. “He cooked pasta for me with this amazing red sauce—probably the same sauce he served to all the women in his life!—but then we stayed up all night talking, and I left early the next morning.”

  Despite numerous invitations to mandolin concerts and environmental lectures, Kris held back. But when Doug heard that she was headed to Paris, he flew there. Inviting Kris to a night on the town, he took her to an antiglobalization teach-in. Kris noted that Doug was in the inner circle and held longstanding friendships with several key participants. After the workshop they went to dinner, then strolled Paris by night. At 3:00 a.m., Kris announced she had to go. The next day she was headed to climb Mont Blanc. Sitting down in the taxi, Doug stalled. He asked her to go to Chile with him. “He said, ‘I will never let anything happen to you,’” Kris recounted. “The way he said it was something else again.”