YVON CHOUINARD: Reaching the Top by Doing the Right Thing

YVON CHOUINARD

Country like this could bring out anything in a man--ecstasy, murder, grace. I grow aware of this as I follow Yvon Chouinard along the rocks down an offshoot of the Snake River, in Wyoming's Jackson Hole, in the Grand Tetons. Chouinard, 60, the president and founder of Patagonia, the outdoor-clothing and -gear company based in Ventura, Calif., that seems more interested in protecting the environment than its profits, is about to teach me fly-fishing. Ahead of us, the quicksilver water burbles and shushes. Across the river, the cold mountains, patched with snowfields and dark bruises, poke into a hot, dry sky...

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