Perceptions by Gerry Warner

Sometimes our American friends have a better idea, especially when it comes to Black Friday. And no, I don’t mean it’s because they invented Black Friday; quite the opposite. It’s because they know when to say enough to this addictive form of retail therapy and rampant consumerism.

Let me explain.

This week, I got an email from an American company that I’ve dealt with for years. REI, Recreational Equipment Inc., a privately held outdoor recreation store based in Seattle with 140 retail stores across the U.S., including one in Spokane. REI is also a consumers’ co-op, and depending on how much you spend, they return a dividend to every member annually.

I became a REI member more than 50 years ago when I was a teenager growing up in Castlegar and climbing every mountain I could in the Selkirk and Purcell Ranges right next door to our wonderful Rockies. I belonged to the West Kootenay section of the Alpine Club of Canada and in those days it was hard to get good climbing equipment in Canada and Alpine Club members tended to shop at REI either by catalogue or by travelling to their retail outlet in Seattle which consisted of a somewhat ratty collection of old warehouses in the gay part of town. (I understand REI now has gleaming new retail premises in the town that invented Starbucks.)

But I digress.

Actually, one of the reasons I was attracted to REI is that it was the major retail outlet that outfitted the first successful American climb of Mt. Everest way back in 1963 when Jim Whittaker summited the world’s highest peak. A few years later I attended a presentation by Norman Dyhrenfurth, the leader of that expedition, and got his autograph, which thrilled me because he was the first person I ever met that had actually stood on top of mighty “Sagarmatha,” the Nepalese name for Everest and the mountain I worshipped.

I eventually got out of touch with REI and hadn’t set foot on its premises for more than 30 years when I finally visited its store in Spokane in the late 1990s after moving to Cranbrook. I no longer had my membership card or anything like that, but I perused the store, bought a few things and proceeded to the counter to pay and was promptly asked my co-op membership number. Well, by this time, I didn’t have a clue so they asked my name and punched it into the computer and sure enough it came up with one “Gary Warner,” which was actually me. (They probably couldn’t read my tortured handwriting when I first signed my card.)

Anyway, I was quite impressed and made my purchase and I have continued to make many of my outdoor purchases there ever since. And I also collect my annual dividend every year.

So what’s the point of this somewhat obtuse history? Simply this. The REI email I mentioned at the beginning of this column had a message about Black Friday. Allow me to quote it: “This Black Friday the co-op is doing something different. We’re closing all 143 of our stores. Instead of reporting to work, we’re paying our employees to do what we love most—be outside.”

Imagine that, paying their employees to take a day off and forgoing all the revenue they would have made that day to celebrate Black Friday. How subversive is that? In doing such an extraordinary thing in this age of retail therapy and rampant commercialism, REI also quoted the great American naturalist and lover of the outdoors John Muir. “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home.”

John Muir, a hero of mine, said this in 1901. Don’t you think it’s still damn good advice today?

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist and a believer in wilderness as retail therapy.

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