Have you heard of Patagonia? Some of you will recognize the name as a country somewhere on Earth that you have heard of. Others will recognize the name as an upscale clothing line, specializing in outdoor/adventure wear. I first heard the name "Patagonia" in relation to the clothing line, back in the early 1980's when, in another life, I was a fitness instructor for the YWCA. I led aerobic dance and fitness classes and came to know the participants in my classes very well. One of the women often brought her young children to the "Y" and they always had the most gorgeous mittens, hats, and scarves. She liked to talk about where she bought clothing and that is when I learned about Patagonia, the label. Over the years, I, too, purchased Patagonia clothing and began receiving Patagonia catalogs.
A Patagonia catalog not only displays what you can purchase from the company but the pages are also filled with spectacular photography of hikers, climbers, skiers, etc. doing amazing feats of uber-adventure with the backdrop of remote regions of the world where we non-adventurers would quake in our boots even thinking about going. It matters not if the region is filled with snowy and freezing weather or filled with dense forests and unbelievable humidity that encourages crawling and creeping creatures - someone will want to hike, climb, traverse, ski, or rappel through, over or across it. I never throw out a Patagonia catalog without first thumbing very slowly through each page, paying little or no attention to what is for sale, but, rather, studying the pictures and reading the descriptions and locations of each image. Consequently, I have learned about regions of the world that I had never, heretofore, seen - much less heard of.
Patagonia, the geographic location, is a region located in Argentina and Chile that integrates the southern-most section of the Andes mountain range, along with deep valleys, vast lakes and rain-forest-like vegetation. Patagonia, the company, has made one of its basic tenets to educate the world and its peoples on conservation measures to help preserve the planet, including the Patagonia region. Each catalog contains one or more editorials on the plight of certain world areas that are struggling to maintain their eco-structures and avoid environmental collapse. The most recent catalog contains an article titled, "End of a River?" by Jonathan Waterman, and is about the dire straights that the Colorado River is in. The article discusses "the challenge of balancing human water needs with those of animals and plants......as well as the water cost of doing business and 'our' efforts to reduce water (sic) use." Waterman goes on to say "The Colorado River has been engineered to death. Each year, seven western states and northern Mexico take 16.5 million acre-feet (enough water to supply 33 million American households) of river water. Amid the 12th year of drought in the southwest, climate models show that conditions will continue to dry the snowmelt-fed river. Add explosive population growth, increasing the demand for water, and the river's future becomes a ticking time bomb."
I think that my showers should, perhaps, be a bit shorter. I had no idea........
An enlightened Ancora imparo
