The Man Who Gave Away Patagonia
Doug Tompkins sold his stake in The North Face for $50,000. 
He used the money to co-found Esprit. Then he sold that too, and did something almost no one does with a fortune: he disappeared.
He moved to the tip of South America in 1990 with a theory most businessmen would find absurd.
He believed the best thing a rich man could do was buy wilderness before someone else destroyed it, then hand it back to the country it belonged to.
Together with his wife Kris, a former CEO of Patagonia clothing, they bought and conserved more than 2 million acres across Chile and Argentina. For context: that is roughly the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined. Most of it had been degraded farmland. Overgrazed, stripped, exhausted.
The Valle Chacabuco ranch alone had been one of South America’s largest sheep operations. They bought it in 2004 for $10 million, then spent another $55 million over 20 years restoring the grasslands. 
Pumas returned. Guanacos returned. The land remembered what it was.
The Chileans were not immediately grateful. Many locals saw it as a land grab. An American buying millions of acres and telling them to change their way of life. Some accused him of planning to split the country in two. Others claimed he was building a nuclear waste site. He kept buying land anyway.
The deal his wife finalized in his name after his death became the largest-ever private land donation to a country.
Over 1 million acres handed directly to Chile, triggering government protections on another 9 million. Five new national parks. Three expanded. A conservation corridor stretching 1,250 miles.
He died on December 8, 2015, in a kayaking accident on a Patagonian lake, surrounded by friends including Yvon Chouinard. He had called what he was doing “paying rent for his time on the planet.”
There is a certain kind of person who builds something great and then builds something greater by walking away from it.
Tompkins is the rarest version: he walked away from two fortunes, bought a wilderness, and gave it to strangers.
The land is still there. The sheep are gone.
If this kind of story is what you read on weekends, you might belong here.
Gandalv / @Microinteracti1
Dang you raised your boys up Right! Pretty amazing what you do, and the valuable lessons you are teaching your Boys. The world could sure use more people like you.
The relief on his face when you said free. It looked like a huge weight was lifted off of him.
I just noticed that every house you visited and offer the free lawn cleaning… no one offered snacks??? Go to filipino house before you start tour cleaning they will offer something.
Video maker is Blessing boys
I just absolutely love her. I follow her on Instagram. When you are feeling so down with the News.
Watching her cook for the people in Gaza is so inspiring and reminds you that there are humans out there.
@odedanilo Yes..
The people who love long home-alone periods aren't avoiding life - they're living it on their own deeply satisfying terms: books, shows, hobbies, silence, imagination, no mask needed. So not only do they exist, they're out there quietly enjoying their perfect day..
Dear ladies never forget that: The same world that shames me for being a single mother also shames you for not being a mother and shames another woman for having too many children..It shames one woman for having a child at the age of 19 because she's too young but also shames another for having at 36 because she's too old..It shames a woman who marries young as well as the one who marries old..It shames women who don't have beautiful bodies and shames those who go under the knife to get the bodies. This world shames all women, not a single one of us is spared, not a single one. So love and make yourselves happy.