Has Trump Pushed Me to Fleece?

Jesus fucking Christ.

Another week, another batch of asinine and dangerous moves by Trump.

Because I work from home, I have a hard time tuning out the orange asshole. Morbid curiosity gets the best of me and I can’t help but rubberneck the Trump clown-car crash on MSNBC. My “Fuck Trump” shirt is fading and fraying like my hopes and nerves.

Which is why, on Monday, I watched that fat fuck, flanked by Orrin Hatch and a bunch of other republican flacks, announce the largest rollback of federal land protection in the nation’s history.

“The administration shrank Bears Ears National Monument, a sprawling region of red rock canyons, by 85 percent, and cut another monument, Grand Staircase-Escalante, to about half its current size. The move, a reversal of protections put in place by Democratic predecessors, comes as the administration pushes for fewer restrictions and more development on public lands.”

Los Angeles Times.

Trump wants corporations to rape the land for profit. I’m sure his family of grifters is salivating at the prospects of building a gaudy Trump-whatever in the middle of monumental lands. Because everything he touches turns to shit, his latest affront to all things decent, humane and good shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, let alone me. It stinks.

Full disclosure: I am not an outdoor person. At All. I often joke, “if Outside magazine was called Inside, I might read it.  Spending my 50^th birthday at Yosemite years back was a disaster. Don’t get me started on camping: Carting food, shelter, clothes and other crap from the comfort of home to the discomfort of dirt, dust and bugs could not hold less appeal.

And yet: There is something so gross, awful and fucked up about making it okay to ruin finite resources that sent me over the edge.

I head over to Twitter and find this:

Elated, I share immediately and write, “If I wore fleece, I’d buy the fuck out of it here.”

More disclosure: I don’t shop Patagonia, REI, Northface or any other outdoor retailers, per my original disclosure above. I even worked in the outdoor space for years; KEEN Footwear was a client, prompting biannual trips to the Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt Lake City. Most Polartec-clad attendees bounced blissfully from booth to booth full of carabiners and canoes on a euphoric high. Me? I tried like hell to hide my hiking sandals under the widest bell bottoms I could find. You know what else? I’ve never been around so many passionate, smart, down-to-earth people in my life. I grew to LOVE going to the OR show, and truly miss attending.

Companies like Patagonia, brave and vocal enough to stand up the Trump, deserve to be supported now more than ever.

A friend offered this suggestion: “I feel like this could be a good option for a tennis skirt that can fashionably be ripped” along with a photo and link to the Patagonia Women’s Tech Fishing Skort, a technical women’s fly-fishing skirt with built in shorts that combines excellent performance and comfort.