Backpacker

You kind of have to, yeah, you can't just, I mean, in some sense, like when I look back at my outdoor journey, I feel like that, you know, influencers weren't really a thing in 2011, 2012, 2013.

But I mean, certainly like, uh, I used to get Backpacker Magazine, and I don't think that Backpacker Magazine was being unrealistic when they would post pictures of a hike or something.

But you still see those pictures, and you're like, oh, this is amazing.

I want to go here.

In 2007, National Geographic named him Adventurer of the Year.

Two years before that, Backpacker Magazine made him their Person of the Year, which he says was the moment his very traditional New England family finally stopped worrying he was throwing away his college degree.

By his early 20s, he had walked across the country on the sea-to-sea route.

And then came the idea that made him famous.

And I was in my spring about to graduate from the program.

Somehow, someway, Backpacker Magazine had found tarptent.com and had somebody had gotten hold of one of their products.

I don't remember that they ever ordered one.

I didn't.

No one said backpacker on the order form or whatever.

But anyway, and they and they published two articles in that.

I remember that spring of 04 Backpacker magazine, two articles about tarp tent products.

At that point, there were two of them.