A Wild Idea

by Jonathan Franklin

  Under a tent erected in the yard of the office, friends and colleagues gathered. The public was invited to pay its final respects. Kris made her way through the crowd, speaking with mourners individually, hugging many. The depth of Tompkins’s alliances (and influence) was showcased by the presence of former adversaries. Bernardo Matte, the leader of one of Chile’s wealthiest families, paid his respects, even though Tompkins had called him a wolf in sheep’s clothing in an infamous magazine advertisement. Matte was distraught. Over the course of years, via endless emails, chats, dinners, and trips, the Matte family had learned to appreciate not only Doug himself but also his passionate defense of nature.

  Opening the service, Kris could barely speak. She was utterly wrecked by the loss of her Doug. The mission would continue, she declared. Millions of acres of wilderness, roaring rivers, and untouched glaciers—they were close to saving it all. Their forests, ranches, private parks, and nature sanctuaries were assembled and ready to be given as gifts to the people of Chile and Argentina. They would be donated to the public as fully developed national parks. “She spoke with dignity and with a force that welled from a place inside her,” wrote Ridgeway. “She gave everything to each sentence and paragraph. Drained, she paused, breathed, and with each breath would rebuild until she continued with an even more profound power that none of us had seen before.”

  After the memorial service, Kris and inner circle friends boarded flights to Valley Chacabuco where Doug would be buried. A friend’s plane was reconfigured. Seats were removed to provide space for the casket. The pilot, Rodrigo Noriega, had learned bush pilot skills with Doug, so Kris entrusted him to fly her husband’s body and spirit back to the valley. Noriega flew toward Mount San Valentin, the highest peak in Patagonia. Capped by three glaciers, the flattened peak was a place where Tompkins often sought solace. He liked to gas up the Husky and spiral around the cloud-shrouded summit—his way to blow off steam.

  As Noriega approached, the clouds opened, sunlight glinted off the ice. Kris moved into the front seat. Noriega dipped lower, banked over the glacier, and flew one loop, then another. The light plane zoomed over the summit, above the forests and rivers that Tompkins fought to protect. Kris reached behind her, putting her hand on Doug’s casket. Describing Doug’s battles to prevent the dam on the Baker River, Noriega said, “There’s some romance in the sense that Lake Carrera is where the Baker River is born, where it starts. So, he saved the Baker River, but the lake took his life.”

  Doug’s final flight was met by Summer and Quincey Tompkins. His two daughters had traveled nearly twenty-four hours from San Francisco and rushed to the heart of Patagonia. “He was always so invincible—it would have surprised me less if it had been a car accident or a plane crash,” said Quincey. “It was very weird. And yet it didn’t take me very long to feel like he lived on his own terms, and he died on his own terms. He was there, doing what he loved with his friends. And he was wearing his khakis and his Brooks Brothers button-down shirt, and kind of ill-prepared for what befell him, but that’s who he was.”

  Kris arranged to bury Doug at the tiny Valley Chacabuco cemetery. The graveyard was at the center of their Patagonia Park, next to Doug’s beloved airstrip and just a ten-minute walk down the hill from Butler House, their home on the hill. The twenty-plot cemetery had been built by sheep ranchers generations earlier, then upgraded by Doug, who redesigned the fence, replaced the entry gate, and added a sign with a John Muir quotation: “There is no synonym for God so perfect as beauty.”

  Patagonia’s earlier pioneer families faced the frequent death of small children, and many of the region’s older gravestones marked the deaths of infants. Burying the babies on the ranch allowed family members to visit their lost children, and for a spouse it was the same. Kris told Doug’s aide Hernan Mladinic that she needed Doug nearby. “Doug lived one hundred lives in one,” said Kris. “I hope he’s remembered as someone who really sought beauty in his life, whether it was the line skiing down a glacier, to architecture, to fine art, to the parks where we created our homes—everything. A renaissance man. A wild guy. Happy and fearless.”

  Family, friends, and colleagues spoke at Doug’s memorials—and hundreds of letters and messages poured in—but it was his closest friends who had the final word. “We could not even miss one paddle stroke for fear of going over,” said Yvon Chouinard, recalling the day of the fatal accident. “The boys made a valiant effort—but we lost Doug. We lost a Chief. By his actions, Doug became the teacher we all needed—and he still is.”

  As the coffin was lowered down, the pallbearers strained. The ropes were tough to maintain, his coffin twisted sideways. The Alerce wood was so heavy it felt like they couldn’t hold it up. Mimicking Doug’s heavily accented gringo Spanish, a voice shouted “No. No. It’s Crooked. Straighten that out. Straighten that out! Straight!” The entire funeral ceremony cracked up. Laughing and crying, they all smiled. They all knew that Doug would most certainly have fixated on the angle and aesthetics of a coffin being slightly tilted as it was lowered. That was just one of the many Doug voices they already missed.

  As shovelfuls of topsoil hit the lid of the casket, Kris tossed a bouquet of native flowers on the casket, and a lone female voice cried out their beloved battle cry—“Patagonia sin Represas!” The gathered tribe responded in a raucous chorus—“Patagonia Without Dams!”

  Following the funeral, most of the invited guests flew home, but the Tompkins tribe bunkered down in the guest lodge and in the staff quarters clustered at the heart of Patagonia Park. The five survivors of the expedition (Chouinard, Ridgeway, Ellison, Boyles, and Alvarez) gathered in a circle at the lodge to dissect with Kris the details of Doug’s last journey. They reexamined the accident in painful sessions—part group therapy, part closure.

  Kris needed details. So did Doug’s close friends and Summer and Quincey, his daughters. How had those experienced expeditioners, with a record of an ascent of K2 and dozens of kayak first-descents, been ambushed during the equivalent of what they thought was an afternoon stroll? As she peppered the team with queries, Kris singled out the bravery of Weston Boyles. She wasn’t looking to blame, but she simply needed to understand.

  Reliving the chaos of the final hectic moments and aided by hindsight, the kayakers found several things they could have done differently—like all of them wearing dry suits. But there was no denying the bad luck. The storm came up sudden and deadly. Weather station data later confirmed that gusts had reached sixty miles per hour, while breaking waves on the lake measured six feet. Kris was still in shock. “The loss of the physical presence of him is really painful for me,” she said. “It may always be there for me, I don’t know.”

  She then took over their agenda, turned up the heat, and dedicated her entire being into completing their mutual dream. Month after month she would focus her life on completing their mission. “People ask me, ‘How did you hold it together after your beloved husband died?’ I say, ‘It’s the reverse: it’s probably what keeps me going,’” she said later. “The pressure cooker really took the skin off my back. It was probably the best thing that could have happened to me.”

  Less than a week after the funeral, Kris flew to Argentina to join President Mauricio Macri in a private meeting to discuss Iberá National Park. Macri leafed through the coffee table books Kris had brought and marveled at the scenes—flocks of white egrets, rainbow macaw parrots, lazing anteaters roaming the marshlands. He saw something like the African savannah but flush with South American wildlife. Kris explained that Iberá was a biodiversity wonderland, one of the few remaining ecosystems on Earth providing natural habitat to flaming red parrots, long-legged wolves, and stalking jaguars. Macri jumped at the chance to provoke a regional economic boom based on nature-as-product and powered by a sustainable development model. What was the downside? Macri asked his ministers. Who could criticize him for receiving privately owned lands and converting them into a national park for all Argentines? That the donation came from
a wealthy California couple had made the deal sweeter. “It was a tectonic shift. And Doug’s not here,” said Kris. “And maybe it happened because he’s not here. Certainly, it would be impossible to say that Doug’s dying didn’t have some role in this taking place. Because there was this outpouring of loss for this man who was so extraordinary in many ways.”

  Within days of his death, Kris noticed a phenomenon in Chile: now that Doug was no longer alive, nearly everyone appreciated him, even former enemies. Tormenting Tompkins had been a Chilean national pastime, but his sudden passing cleared the air of any doubts. Conspiracy theories melted. The undeniable truth of Doug Tompkins was exposed: he had battled to buy up paradise, then fought like hell to give it all away. “When Doug died, things went into hyperdrive,” explained Hernan Mladinic. “The attitude of government officials changed. They saw he was a guy who died doing exactly what he believed in. The bureaucrats blocking us probably thought, ‘We’re not going to be the ones who prevents this project from happening!’ He went from public enemy number one to poster child.”

  A coalition of four Chilean senators suggested that in honor of his contributions to conservation Tompkins deserved the title of honorary Chilean citizen. “He was a man who contributed quite a bit to the national conscience, and he showed business leaders how to give back much of what they earned,” explained senator Juan Pablo Letelier.

  The measure passed unanimously. “One would have liked to give him this in life, but nobody expected his death; he was so full of vitality,” said senator Alfonso de Urresti, who had shared “many fights and battles” with the pugnacious gringo.

  Chilean president Michelle Bachelet was also in shock. She’d spent months pushing her cabinet to find solutions, to work with Doug and Kris on the mega-donation. Bachelet lauded Tompkins as “an innovative man, generous in protecting the natural heritage of the planet. His masterpiece is on a global scale and speaks to a vision of gratitude and commitment to future generations.” She agreed to meet Kris Tompkins, and suddenly the Chilean government also viewed the couple’s mega-donation as a national priority. “I felt an opportunity with President Bachelet. It was a moment,” said Kris.

  Kris understood that her husband had been a workaholic, but only after his death did she realize how much of his vision existed not on paper but only in the depths of his memory. As she investigated, she marveled at how an Encyclopedia Britannica’s worth of details were stored, sorted, and prioritized in his mind. She also felt free to steer Tompkins Conservation in a brave new direction. Kris was determined to push their historic conservation accords with the governments of both Chile and Argentina, but now she would do it her way. She valued bringing long-term stability to an organization that at times jumped from one brilliant idea to another. “I would say his impact on me, which I consider mighty, was from the day he died forward. The rest was bootcamp,” Kris said. “As Doug always said, ‘We have to be married forever, because who else could stand being married to us!’ And in fact he meant it seriously, and he was right. And then he died, and I’m doing the same stuff I was doing when he was alive. But now, the worst thing that could happen to me happened.”

  In a bold and decisive first move, Kris favored a strategy that Doug never would have: she asked for help. “There was probably no scenario in which we would have done work for Tompkins Conservation had he not passed away,” admitted Jib Ellison, Doug’s expedition partner and founder of Blu Skye, the environmental consulting firm. “Kris was an unbelievably grieving widow,” Ellison explained. “And in terms of all the little details, Doug was really the only one who knew everything that was going on. In the midst of just having lost the love of her life, she was in no position to interview all the different people who thought they reported to Doug, try to get a handle on all those threads, work with the finance department to pull it all together. Somebody needed to take stock, put some structure outside of what existed in Doug’s mind.”

  Kris and Jib worked closely for weeks, then months, to develop a five-year strategic plan. They prioritized dozens of projects, each with a lofty goal, ranging from Doug’s fascination to develop Moritz EIS, the tastiest gourmet ice cream ever, to designs for a book to be titled How to Make a National Park. “When he died, one of my main goals was to really look at where we are,” Kris said. “Because the way I would run an annual financial budget and the way Doug would run it are completely different.”

  Relations between Kris and Doug’s first wife, Susie, were pleasant and never overly complicated. Rare was the year or two when they didn’t touch base. This was different. Doug was dead. For the daughters, especially Summer, there was a distinct feeling that much of what had needed to be shared with her father was never spoken. The ending of Summer and Doug’s relationship felt incomplete to her. Then, Doug’s last will and testament exploded the precarious relationship with Summer.

  The will codified what Doug had already read into the public record for decades—that he would leave no inheritance to his daughters and that all assets would end up with Kris and Tompkins Conservation. But when his daughter Summer read his will, she was stunned. Doug in effect indicated in his will that he was leaving none of his millions to his daughters and he warned them not to contest the will. For Summer Tompkins it felt like a slap from the grave. “That’s dark and cruel,” said Susie, who was shocked, given that the families were on fairly good speaking terms when he died. “It wasn’t like we had been an estranged ex-family,” she said.

  Quincey and Summer Tompkins were not wanting for cash. Their mom, Susie, pulled in millions from her share of Esprit. Doug had long proclaimed his belief that leaving an inheritance would strip his children of initiative. He had funded a generous emergency medical fund if it were ever needed, but refused to subsidize their lives if they each remained healthy. But he was always clear that every last dollar of his fortune ought to be spent on nature.

  Summer, however, criticized her father in the press in both California and Chile, and then sued his estate in both places. She sought a judicial solution to what ultimately was the psychological hole left behind by a father who had never bonded with her—a dad who went on a six-month trip with friends the day after she was born.

  Summer had never understood her father’s indifference. Considering how she was in many ways quite like her dad—quick of mind, feisty, and confident—was Summer too much a reflection of himself for Doug Tompkins to really let into his life? Summer often had a contentious relationship with her father. He was impossibly bossy and judgmental, but just before his death she confided to her mother that after decades of distance “he was just starting to accept me.” A former girlfriend confessed that Doug was ridiculously bad at showing affection for his daughters, while in private he was more generous in spirit. “He loved both of them a lot,” she said. “He would sometimes, in very tender moments with me, he would tell me how much he loved those two, how much he loved his children. I wonder if he ever told them.”

  Kris Tompkins meanwhile focused on her key priority: donating the parklands. In Chile, Kris was certain that President Bachelet was her best—and perhaps final—shot to complete the park plans in a single mega-donation. The terms of the offer were complicated in the exacting details but simple in overall scope. Tompkins Conservation would donate 1.2 million acres of land with a combined $90 million worth of infrastructure to CONAF—the Chilean National Park administrators. In exchange the government would bundle together ten million acres of federal lands and promise to create five new national parks, expand three others, and launch a new era of economic development for Chilean Patagonia.

  Kris worked nonstop with Debbie Ryker, Carolina Morgado, and Ingrid Espinoza. They called in all their allies. Kris also asked Jib Ellison to assemble a Blu Skye team to crunch the numbers and brainstorm a five-year strategic plan for the donation. How should she convert her highly subsidized private parks into long-term and self-sustaining national parks run by the Chilean and Argentine governments?

  In
Argentina, good news continued to arrive. Unlike the maddening pace in Chile, the Argentine government seemed eager to advance plans for Iberá Park. Despite turf wars between provincial and federal authorities, the Tompkins team of Marisi Lopez, Sofia Heinonen, and Corrientes senator Sergio Flinta proved unstoppable. They also had a legion of local supporters. Empowered by the potential for the park to bring in tourists and much-needed revenue, mayors moved to build museums celebrating the local Guarani culture. Just a decade earlier, the brain drain to urban cities like Buenos Aires was leaving the community without hope, but now the young students were returning home proud. They described Iberá and Corrientes as a paradise being rebuilt to its former glory.

  “It’s too bad Doug is not here today to see that in Corrientes we have proudly saved an ecosystem, in the middle of the extinction crisis,” said senator Sergio Flinta, the once staunch critic of Tompkins. “I don’t think everything has to do with rewilding species. Something greater was accomplished here. Doug and Kris managed to integrate human beings into the project. This is not an elitist project done by intellectuals or fanatics. As important as the reintroduction of Corrientes’ iconic jaguar is, as a symbol of this project, for me it’s just as important to see our youth becoming guides for the tourists.”

  Chapter 22

  Islands in the Storm

  To me, Doug’s achievement is more than just creating a park. He also managed to get a stubborn bunch of people to fall in love with it. Think about it: he was fighting with almost the entire community to get them to fall in love with nature. That’s rare, to say the least. And yet he managed to get us involved with it enough to change our perception about living next to nature. That’s very powerful.