IN MEMORY OF DOUG TOMPKINS At Patagonia, we frequently receive compliments for the
What they achieved in the next 20 years will stand
full-page ad we ran in The New York Times on Black Friday
among the most significant achievements in the pantheon
with the large photo of one of our best-selling jackets and
of conservation victories. Already several parks have been
the bold headline, “Don’t Buy This Jacket.” But it wasn’t our
completed and opened with visitation growing annually.
idea. In 1989, Doug Tompkins, who, with his first wife, Susie,
When the remaining projects currently in development are
owned the women’s clothing giant Esprit, ran a full-page ad
completed—and Kris has vowed that she and the strong team
with a picture of one of their best-selling dresses and the
they assembled will complete them—the list will total at least
bold headline, “Don’t Buy This Dress.”
12 new and expanded national parks and two provincial
Doug was always able to see farther over the horizon than the rest of us. It was Doug’s idea in 1968 when he
parks that will in total protect more than 15 million acres. Six weeks after that ill-fated December day on Lago
proposed to Yvon Chouinard and three others of his
General Carrera in Patagonia, when Doug and I, in a double
climbing buddies that they buy a used Ford van and drive
kayak, capsized into icy water—when somehow I lived while
it from California to Patagonia to put up a new route on Fitz
he died—we had a service for Doug in San Francisco, where
Roy. That became the most influential trip in Yvon’s life,
he had lived for many decades. More than a thousand
and it was why, five years later, he decided to call his new
people came from all corners of the world. It was the
clothing line Patagonia.
anticipated mix of tears and reflection, inspiration and
Doug’s influence is everywhere at Patagonia, from our
insight. Doug was one of those rare people who indelibly
open-office architecture to our corporate philanthropy.
imprint on your psyche so that even in his absence there is
When Yvon introduced me to Doug in the 1980s and we
a fierce presence. It was no surprise that everyone leaving
started climbing together, I stopped in to see him at Esprit’s
Doug’s service was united in a call to arms to keep his
San Francisco headquarters. I remember the small sign
flame burning.
above his desk. “Commit and then figure it out,” summarized one of the most important lessons I learned from him.
More surprising was the theme that threaded the recollections and stories from friends and family. It was
Another sign read, “No detail is small.” All who worked
the recognition that Doug’s commitment to beauty more
with Doug—whether in the era when he founded The North
than anything underpinned not just his aesthetics and his
Face, or when he later founded Esprit, or when he and Susie
celebrated skills as a designer, but his commitments to
separated and Doug sold his half of the company to launch
environmentalism and conservation.
his conservation projects in the southern cone of South
“To those of us who grew up going out into the wilds of
America—came to learn that Doug was at once a micro
the world where nature was basically untouched,” Doug said
manager and a macro visionary.
at the beginning of 180° South—the documentary that follows
Kris McDivitt fell in love with Doug in the early 1990s
a team of younger climbers and surfers retracing his and
and left her position as Patagonia’s founding CEO to move
Yvon’s 1968 road trip to Patagonia— “we got into our souls a
to South America to join her new husband in realizing the
sense of beauty.”
biggest vision of his life: to purchase private lands in Chile
We buried Doug in the small cemetery at the new
and Argentina and convert them to national parks. Kris
Patagonia Park: one of the largest of the Tompkins
seemed to fill Doug’s gaps, and those of us who knew Doug
Conservation projects. His simple headstone reads:
watched in amazement as a new and more patient empathy replaced the older and more abrupt acerbity. He called her Birdy and she called him Lolo, and together they were a force of nature that became a force for nature.
DOUGLAS RAINSFORD TOMPKINS BIRDY LOLO 03-1943 12-2015
On the backside of the arch over the entrance to the cemetery, there is a small sign. It is one of the last of his celebrated quotes, this one from John Muir, that Doug placed before he died…
No hay sinonimo para Dios mas perfecta que la Belleza Translation: There is no synonym for God more perfect than Beauty. —Rick Ridgeway, Vice President Public Engagement Doug Tompkins flies over Reñihué in his Husky A-1. Patagonia, Chile. Scott Soens