Patagonia & me — once a month on average since September 2011

Do you receive a Patagonia catalog once per month (on average)?

Or am I on a special customer list? Needing extra encouragement?  (Which seems possible since I haven't bought anything from Patagonia for at least 3-4 years — I just simply don't need anything....oh not completely true: I could use a new pair of the Patagonia Stand Up Shorts.)

The catalogs are luscious eye candy, the models, the landscapes and even the clothes. And they get me going to check for airline tickets to exotic places, to the gym to try to look sleek and to wonder if I could throw out some old clothes so I could buy new ones. Yes, the Patagonia catalogs work.

But I do need one every moth? As I noted in "Claim less and deliver more" — is Patagonia doing that? I love Patagonia stuff — it's part of my own bucket-list-fantasy.

But a mailed, shipped-by-oil, remnant of a tree every month? I am no hard-line sustainability geek — but are there no limits? To Patagonia catalogs? Or, are we running into reality — Patagonia is a business and everyone likes money (ownership and staff) and that simple fishing trip to Patagonia (the land) is not free. The issue is not Patagonia but how do we live lightly and yet luxuriously. Part of it is to buy things which last. But do I need a Patagonia catalog once a month? Apparently the Patagonia marketing people think I do — and who am I to disagree?

Here's the real-life dissonance, as delivered to my door, and on the approximate dates, (which from a marketing perspective is intertesting): 

(click to enlarge -- and they really are lovely photos.)