The ex-billionaire
You may have heard of me. Over the last few years I've become famous since I decided to transfer my company, which is worth $3 billion, to a non-governmental organization that fights to preserve the climate. It's true! Since then I no longer have any savings to my name, but that doesn't bother me. I used to be very poor and yet I never stopped enjoying life.
I remember the time when life was an adventure, with new discoveries every day. I lived on the edge: of my energy and my finances. As far as finances were concerned, I have to confess that the limit was quite low, around U$1 a day. Having lived a simple childhood, as the son of a plumber, helped me a lot to find alternative solutions to make my dreams come true.
I grew up in an America that was flush with wealth after the end of its involvement in the Korean War. Everything was cheap and you could live a reasonable life from other people's waste. For the first time in history, young people could feel liberated from the prison of work and social conventions and throw themselves into a life of adventure. If everything went wrong, there would always be plenty of jobs.
When I joined a falconry club as a teenager, I discovered my passion for climbing. From then on, I ventured out with my friends on weekend climbs and gradually became an accomplished climber.
At the age of 24, I was arrested for vagrancy. My only crime was wandering around the country without a destination or any money in my pocket, hitching a ride on a freight train. Shortly afterwards I met the woman of my life, who has always been by my side through all the challenges we've faced. She studied arts and home economics, and had an adventurous soul like me.
When Melania and I got married, life was full of poetry and nothing else. Our only requirement in this life was to have enough money to do what really gave us pleasure. And the little money we had never stopped us from fulfilling our dreams. We just did things in a different way to most people. Luckily for us, our pleasures weren't expensive.
During our first few years of marriage, we spent several days a month sleeping in the back of our car. When the money ran out, I would scavenge bottles from the rubbish dumps to raise enough money to put gas in the tank and buy food. Life was cheap back then.
My love of climbing survived the hard times. Any money left over was spent on climbing supplies. But instead of taking high calorie food with us, like our companions in the mountain shelters, we bought the crumpled tins of cat food that were put up for sale. The cat pâté was enriched with boiled potatoes, squirrel and bird meat and eaten with gusto.
I soon discovered that the climbing equipment available on the market wasn't suited to our needs. As time went by, I began to imagine changes to their design that could make them easier for us to use. I ended up learning the trade of blacksmith just to be able to put my designs into practice. Before long, the equipment I developed would become a hit with my companions, and word of mouth helped me to earn a little extra money from selling them. At the end of the climbs, on the way home, I now enjoyed a plate of lobster and abalone at a beachside restaurant.
Over time, I ended up opening a climbing equipment and trekking clothing company, Patagonia. My assets grew, but my lifestyle remained unchanged. When, at the age of 84, I discovered my name on the Forbes list of billionaires, I was still living in a modest house and driving the same old Subaru with a surfboard strapped to the roof. The discovery that I was a billionaire stunned me. What do you mean? I had never even wanted to become an entrepreneur!
During the months that followed, I woke up countless times in the middle of the night with the pleasurable sensation of hanging from a rope high up in El Capitán, my fingers gripping the cracks in the granite and my face turned towards the sun, admiring the circling flight of a hawk. How happy I was to feel like this, in communion with nature again. My dreams reminded me of the importance of ensuring that the next generations have the same chance I had to live in contact with nature. But the way things are going...
Since our past initiatives are no longer enough, we now need to raise the bar. That's why I got together with my wife and children and together we decided to donate our assets to the climate cause. Maybe more people will follow our example? Since then, my soul has been wandering freely in this world of God, in search of new adventures that only nature can offer me.
P.S.: The above account is fictitious and has been written based on the extensive biography of Yvon Chouinard.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
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