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Outside Magazine November 2001
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King of the Dirtbags (Cont.)

THE NEXT DAY we continued trekking north. I was hoping we might make one more ascent, but I think Yvon had already gone back to trout-fishing dreams.

We stopped for lunch at Summit Lake. It was the geographic fulcrum, the halfway point between our start at Elkhart Park and our finish at Green River Lakes. George and Kent and I lolled in the tundralike hummocks while Yvon cast a line.

It was high noon, that unluckiest of fly-fishing hours, but a cutthroat took his fly and promptly snapped his 5x tippet. He replaced it with a 4x and immediately caught a one-pounder, then a pound-and-a-halfer. As he was popping the fish off the hook with a one-handed flick of the wrist, a big sloshing sound rolled across the water. Yvon looked back over his shoulder just in time to see the splash. In a seamless series of motions, he let go of the hook; began snapping the line in great big sky S's, streaking out more and more line; spun 180 degrees while the hook was floating in the air; cast, throwing all the line off the reel; dropped the fly bull's-eye inside the concentric circles; and caught a two-and-a-half-pounder before the one-and-a-half-pounder had time to swim away.

He issued his familiar, exuberant roar, and then allowed himself a brief commentary: "Now that's...that's fly-fishing."



TWO HOURS LATER it was raining, and Josey Wales had sat down on the trail for the hundredth time. We'd climbed our climb and caught our fish and now the trip was about to fall apart, even though we were still a three-day walk from the trailhead. George volunteered to cajole and kick Josey along the trail while the three of us double-loaded Guy and hustled down to Three Forks Park.

The downpour kindly commenced only after we got our tents up. By the time we'd eaten Yvon's homemade tsampa, we were bone-cold and drenched. George and Kent hit the sack, but Yvon and I couldn't help ourselves. We hung around our miserable little campfire, choking on smoke, watching a heavy mist come off the high park grass and drift into the trees. We took swigs of Glenlivet and let ideas bounce and tumble around us.

Yvon told me about the time his son, Fletcher, speared a wild pig and cooked it using one of Yvon's recipes. He told me about his dream of inspiring the biggest companies in the world to give 1 percent of their gross sales to environmental causes, just like Patagonia Inc. does. He called it a revolution, and his eyes showed white in the dark.

"Imagine! Just imagine if Conoco and IBM and Microsoft and GM and United Fruit and Hughes all gave 1 percent. It would be billions of dollars. It could save the planet!"

("People criticize Yvon," says Tompkins, "but 99.9 percent of these people can't match what he's doing for the environment. Yes he owns a big company and he could do more—I could do more, you could do more, we all need more courage to do more. But for everything Yvon takes out of this world, he gives back more than anybody I know. And that's the bottom line.")

Yvon, the maker of his own myth, was growing tired, but he had to tell me about this freediver he knows who has adapted himself so well to the under-water environment, has become so tuned-in, that fish will guide him to lobsters, that dolphins have saved him from shark attacks.

Yvon, a Henry David Thoreau and a Ralph Lauren and a Muhammad Ali all forged into one, was tired, but he wanted me to understand that sustainability is the only hope for the planet. "Sustainability, sustainability..." He repeated it like a mantra.

Yvon, the master of market semiotics, was so tired, but he said he has been trying to write a book for nearly a decade. "Writing is too hard," he complained. It's a book about business. What else. "You know what the business of most businesses in America is? To sell the business. The business is to sell the business. Cash out. Go golfing. Well, not me, goddamit."

We were standing hunch-shouldered in the dark, rain draining off the bills of our baseball caps, mist flowing into the black woods like a river, the campfire long since drowned. Yvon had to sleep now, but first he had to tell me something. "I am guilty." This in reference to his profligacy, for his burning fossil fuel to stand in icy water on some remote river and try to think like a fish instead of a human.

He was going to his sleeping bag now, but before he did he wanted to tell me his favorite joke. He'd told it to me before. "There once was this Zen master sitting on a small stone bench, studying his small Japanese rock garden..."

There are only five rocks in the master's garden. Each was chosen for its individual perfection, as well as its unique relationship to the other stones. One day a visitor comes to the garden. The visitor steps slowly around the tiny space, contemplating the rake-grooved gravel and the stones. Eventually the visitor turns to the Zen master and exclaims, "It is perfect." The Zen master shakes his head solemnly and says, "No, it will be perfect when there are only three stones."

Yvon chuckled and said good-night. I offered him my headlamp, but he waved it away and stumbled into the dark.




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