The Cleanest Line

Young Activist Inspires on Martin Luther King Day

At Patagonia, we use Martin Luther King Day as a time to give back to our community – this year was no different. In addition to sending crews of employees to work on local projects with the Ojai Raptor Center and the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy, we also welcomed a remarkable young woman as our guest speaker. The word “remarkable” doesn’t do her justice – she is leaps and bounds beyond that descriptor.

Her name is Erica Fernandez, and she is a senior at Hueneme High School based in Oxnard, California, a neighboring community to Patagonia’s headquarters in Ventura. Erica was outraged when she learned of BHP Billiton’s proposal to build a liquefied natural gas facility off our nearby coast. She worked in concert with the Sierra Club and “Latino No on LNG” to mobilize youth and Latino voices at protests and public meetings, marched through neighborhoods, demonstrated outside BHP Billiton’s offices in Oxnard, reached out to the media, and brought more than 250 high school students to a critical rally. Her passionate testimony at the California State Lands Commission meeting was quoted in news articles, and helped convince the Commission to vote to deny the project. She then went on to help convince the California Coastal Commission to vote 12-0 against the project, and worked on a letter-writing and phone-call campaign to the Governor asking him to veto the project. Her commitment and dogged determination led to being selected as a 2007 winner of the Brower Youth Awards, which recognize youth leadership in conservation, preservation and restoration.

The Sale is On!

Bomb that last run, burn the last rappel, paddle back in . . . just do what you gotta do to get to the BIG SALE!

Winterfest Sale
Feb. 12-21, 2008
30-50% off retail prices on select merchandise, online and in our Patagonia stores.*

Hit the jump to read more sale details. JUST DON'T MISS IT!

[It's almost 8 a.m., just point it! Patagonia Customer Service Special Ops expert Tim K doing his best to finish that Dawn Patrol run and get to work before the sale starts. Photo: localcrew]

Gerry Lopez and Jock Sutherland - Talkin' Pipe Pt. 1

On November 10, 2007, Devon Howard and the Patagonia Cardiff staff hosted a very special event at the shop. Here's Devon to tell you more:

Storytelling in any form has always fascinated me. Whether penning a tale, shooting photos, helping make a surf film or just leafing through a good read, I always become completely enveloped in the process of how a story is built and ultimately unfolds. This quirk of mine sent me on an incredibly fun ride as a writer, photojournalist, and surf magazine editor. The journey allowed me to meet heaps of interesting folks and hear their unique stories. My more recent move to running a surf shop for Patagonia in Cardiff, California certainly didn’t slow or hinder my affinity for employing the story telling process on a daily basis.

Not a Toll Lotta Love

If you were planning on visiting the Cardiff Surf Shop tomorrow morning, please attend the Coastal Commission hearing instead. Let's show the CC that no surf break or state park is worth sacrificing for a toll road.

www.savetrestles.org

Once Upon a Wetland

Sara Benjamin is the Project Director for “Once Upon a Wetland” – a watershed education and wetland restoration project of Oak Grove School in Ojai, California. In partnership with the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy, Meiners Oaks Elementary School and Nordoff High School, the project engages students and the community in restoring the Ojai Meadows Preserve and the Ventura River Watershed.

Recently I spoke with Sara about her work with the “Once Upon a Wetland” project.

Craig: You have a Bachelor’s degree in Earth Systems and Masters degree in marine geology. What led you to study these subjects? Were you interested in environmental sciences as a high school student?

Sara: I am passionate about the interconnected and interdependent aspects of life. In school I studied every facet of life on Earth and the relationships and intersections between these systems: animals, plants, soil, rocks, water, wind, energy, matter, chemistry, biology and physics. This curiosity led me to study the whole Earth System and examine our biosphere, atmosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere and hydrosphere and the relationships, and feedbacks between all of these systems. We delineate so that we can begin to understand the whole Earth by getting a good look at all of the parts; nothing exists independently - everything is connected.

I started to see Earth as a living system and continued my education with a Masters degree in marine geology. The ocean is where new earth is born and eventually dies, being recycled back into the mantle to be born again along a mid-ocean ridge. Plate tectonics points elegantly to the Gaia hypothesis that had made sense to me since childhood; Earth as a living organism.

What's Happening on Your Land

The New York Times has been running a series of detailed articles about the changing demands being placed on public lands throughout the American West.

No matter how far you are from these wide-open spaces, if you pay taxes, this land truly is YOUR land. Active participation in the issues surrounding the use of these lands is the only way to ensure they're managed in a way that best represents tax payers.

One of the articles, "Surge in Off-Roading Stirs Dust and Debate in the West" hits on something  a number of us in the West take for granted: access to good trails on public lands. Trails are our gateways to the wide-open spaces that inspire so much of the silent, human-powered recreation--which in turn inspires us. The great challenge in managing these lands is their very spirit: they're preserved as free and open places where a vast array of users can pursue their own definitions of fun, and live out their own expressions of freedom. Increasingly, this means something land managers refer to as "user-group conflicts."

The below report touches on precisely this topic from a local angle.  It comes to us from local writer, trail activist, and backcountry junkie posting as "Wolfy"  on the well-trafficked blog The Bacon Strip.
 

“It’s easier to pull the trigger than play guitar; easier to destroy than to create.” Desperado

The good thing about the West—the new west where heavy-duty pickup trucks replace horses, smartphones replace sidearms and the money trail leads east—is that wild places like the Ruby Mountains, the Toiyabies, and even little Peavine Mountain in Reno, NV are easy targets for weekend warriors armed with Subarus and Friday afternoons off. The flip side of that is the same. Everyone’s back yard has gotten bigger thanks to interstate highways with 75 MPH speed limits and urban affluence so close to areas that are still remote.