Just saw a couple of videos on youtube promoting Tom Wegener’s surfboards. Ever since I saw the segment on him and his family in Thomas Campbell’s Sprout, he’s been a major inspiration — not just as a surfer, though he’s definitely one of the more stylish longboarders I’ve seen — but for the way he seems to have integrated his sport, his craft and his love of family into one very happy, healthy existence. I know it’s not right to envy someone else, but if I could pick just one person to trade places with…

Anyway, If I ever decide to run away from home (again), I’m going straight to Queensland. If I’m lucky, the Wegeners will be open to adoption.

Photos courtesy of Tom Wegener.

We’re in the thick of preparing ourselves for becoming an actual business”launching the commerce part of our website in a matter of weeks and the first of our retail stores over the next couple of months”and we’re all feeling the effects.

As pressures mount, the stress levels do too. Several of us here at the shop have taken to the climbing gym as our particular form of stress release. It’s proven to be much more effective than the therapist’s couch, and much healthier than the two hour liquid lunch. The best part, however, is that it’s allowed us to know one another in a setting far removed from the office and our office roles. When you’ve had the chance to trust a person at the end of your rope, and allowed them the same opportunity, it carries over into your relationship at work.

We’re trying to convince a few more people each week to come join us, with the goal of having at least half the staff strung out on belay by May, at which time, weather permitting, we’ll shift our focus to the outdoor venues of Smith Rock and the local crags.

I’ve always had a bit of an attitude about folks who lived in the city, assuming that they had simply chosen financial gain over quality of life. And when it came to outdoor sports, well, they weren’t “realâ€? outdoor athletes, because they didn’t live the life of the beach rat or the mountain town local.

Now I live within the city limits of a major metropolis. But it’s not the soulless yuppie enclave I had imagined it to be. It’s a city that cares deeply about limiting urban sprawl, about energizing it’s center through progressive public transportation programs and celebrations of the arts.

More than that, it’s also home to outdoor athletes that are just as passionate and proficient at their sports as any “feralâ€? surfers or skiers. The added benefit is that by being situated equidistant from the surf and the snow, the opportunities are exponentially increased and diversified. I can surf or ski within an hour and a half of my home. I’ve even thought about doing some sort of triathlon that included dawn patrol at the local surf break, cycling in Forest Park at lunch, and an afternoon/evening ski session to close out the day.

For those of us who take a more opportunistic approach to sport, who adjust their recreation of choice according to weather conditions and the best tool for the job, Portland is, in my opinion, the ultimate outdoor town.

I love these guys. A small group of boarders, surfers, and cyclists holed up somewhere in Wales, living the life they love. They sell clothes. Good clothes. Fun stuff. And the clothes seem entirely consistent with the attitude and values of the folks who make them.

But what I love most about Howies is their voice. It’s a collective voice, earnest and honest and intelligent without being full of itself. These guys care deeply about addressing the issues of our day, but their messages are all rooted in an underlying optimism. Something we could all stand to emulate.

A sample from their site. For more, check them out at www.howies.co.uk.

I bought a houseboat, or “floating home,” as the real estate agents like to call them, about a year ago. When I moved in, I had dreams of paddling my outrigger canoe up the channel in the mornings, fishing the salmon runs in the Spring and diving naked off my dock during the full moon for the sheer sensual pleasure of water on skin. The idea of living simply on the water, and enjoying the life of a river rat, held a lot of appeal.

Though I do indeed paddle as often as I can, I’ve realized that in order to keep from getting sick, I have to shower as soon as I’ve left the water, and that if I don’t do the same for my canoe, it will retain a permanent stain. Swimming, clothed or not, is out of the question. The fish I catch are lethargic, and I’ve been warned not to eat anything that I might pull out of the channel, as even limited exposure could be dangerous to my health. So, I found myself modifying my activities to adapt to these limitations. After all, I told myself, it’s still beautiful out there, and that’s just the way things are…

But what the hell is that about?

I can’t claim to be an activist in the classic sense. I don’t attend rallies, I have never chained myself to anything, I don’t even contribute to the organizations whose efforts attempt to right our collective environmental and social wrongs.

But I’ve become a backyard activist. I’m picking up floating debris as I paddle, and doing cleanups along the riverbank that I face each day. I joined the local chapter of Riverkeepers. I’m learning about the history of the channel, the upstream antics of the Mills and Smelting factories that turned the lower Willamette into a Superfund site and what can be done to restore it. I’m testing the water, and getting involved.

It took something close to home, in my own backyard so to speak, to bring me to act. And now that I have, I find myself looking at the other actions in my life, and how easy it is to make other, smaller changes, that collectively have a huge cumulative impact.

It’s a small step, but it feels pretty damn good, actually.

I had the best job on the planet. I worked for Patagonia, Inc., a privately owned experiment in social change, masquerading as a successful outdoor clothing manufacturer. A company that puts relationships before transactions, and, thanks to the vision and passion of it’s owners, Yvon and Malinda Chouinard, is able to maintain the courage of its convictions, working to blend business and philanthropy in forming a new model for corporate responsibility and behavior.This incredible company draws people of like minds, and the resultant culture is an amalgam of the values of the owners, and the generations of dedicated, passionate employees who share those values. It’s a culture that blends work and play, activism and athleticism to form an enterprise unique in the outdoor industry, and in the business environment as a whole. Patagonia is truly one of the most progressive and evolved companies doing business today.

So why leave? Well, the decision was hard but the rationale was simple. The model that Yvon and Malinda created requires replication in order to truly be a sustainable model. Patagonia needs offspring. It’s time to take everything I’ve learned from the best teachers one could ever have, and develop the next generation business, dedicated to blending philanthropy and commerce in new ways. To embody the same core values and communicate them through new avenues, to new audiences.

The point of Patagonia’s existence was never about simply selling more products to more people. That was a means to an end, the end being an expanded sphere of influence, in order to affect a more lasting change. By creating more companies based on that same ideal, we will exponentially increase that sphere of influence. I would hope that there are a dozen companies formed in the coming years from the foundations that Patagonia has laid, each new entry strengthening the industry through healthy competition, but more importantly, each one striving to change the role of business, and the ability of the business sector to affect positive lasting change.

The model for marketing success in the outdoor industry has long been one of hero worship, centered on peak activities performed by elite athletes. The athletes and the activities themselves are elevated to mythical status, and the featured product is valued in part because it is perceived to be built to withstand the rigors of these extreme situations, but mostly because the purchaser feels that by wearing the same product as the rock star, surf god, or paddling diva who wore that product in the magazine, they would, by association, be perceived as being capable of the same feats.

There’s a new paradigm forming. One in which the aspirational model becomes more about the experience and less about the personality. In place of these sport specific uberathletes, the new role models are those individuals who understand their athleticism as just one part of what makes them who they are, who don’t simply recreate, but are acutely aware of the environment that sustains this recreation. They are multi-sport, multi-season athletes who understand the value in matching their activities to the conditions that exist and the opportunities that are available.

Our participation in the outdoors extends beyond the sports we do. Simply being out there invites an awareness of the fragile ecosystems that exist, and our responsibility to protect them for future generations. The new paradigm is one of a larger, more conscious view of the outdoor experience and how it fits into all aspects of one’s life. A view that includes the peak moments as well as the mundane, one that moves between trail and town, between hard core and hanging out.

It’s time to align ourselves with the values that draw us to the outdoors rather than with the high profile personalities that excel in only one small aspect of the larger outdoor experience.

Well, yes, I guess in some ways it is. Like fidelity, honesty, integrity or any of the values that require long-term consistent actions and unwavering commitment, sustainability, on first blush, seems like a pretty dull proposition. But it seems to me that the key is in the style with which one approaches any of these things.

Take fidelity for example. I used to believe that the idea of living with one other person, forsaking all others, was tantamount to a life sentence in maximum security. I now realize that fidelity can be a source of immense satisfaction and reward. Finding new ways to describe long held feelings for the same person throughout a lifetime is a creative endeavor worthy of an endowment, and the rewards of having done so are seemingly immeasurable.

It’s the same with sustainability. The notion of being careful not to squander today’s resources, so tomorrow’s generations can have some too. The idea of living within one’s means, and of putting things back. These all seem to be about sacrifice, and doing without. On the other hand, the idea of making careful conscious choices seems to align with the idea of increasing the value of each thing chosen, thereby turning the practice of sustainability into one of curation, of cultivation, of elegant simplicity and discriminating style.