How To Live a Life Without Regret With Kris Tompkins

Kris Tompkins (0:09)

I think it's almost impossible to be too audacious in this realm.

Because in conservation and rewilding, you set the bar very high.

Because you know, you're going to lose some of it. But never, ever lose sight of what you're going for.

Willow Defebaugh (0:36)

The first time I met Kris Tompkins, I knew I was standing in the presence of greatness.

She is a conservation hero and a true force of nature. Not only did her and her late husband Doug help create the outdoors industry as we know it, but they helped protect over 16 million acres of land in South America and create 16, soon to be 17 national parks. When I'm around Kris and I hear her speak, I feel such a sense of purpose and confidence that together, we can accomplish anything. The backbone of everything she does is a belief in the wildness of this world.

Kris Tompkins (1:20)

If I have a rod in my spine that directs how I see things, not always how I behave, it is that inherent belief that all life has intrinsic value. It does not need humans to place value upon it.

It exists in the absence of us.

Willow Defebaugh (1:47)

I'm Willow Defebaugh and this is The Nature Of. Where we look to the nature of our world for wisdom and ideas that change the way we live. And no one knows the wisdom of wild things, like this week's guest, Kris Tompkins. Together, we talk about how to dream audaciously on behalf of this planet, and what it means to rewild ourselves and the world around us.

Kris, welcome to The Nature Of, thank you so much for being here.

Kris Tompkins (2:16)

Well, well, I'm so happy to be here. There are a lot of common threads between us, and that's not so easy to find. So when you do, it's precious.

Willow Defebaugh (2:27)

Agreed. I'm going to start out by asking you something I like to ask all of my guests, which is, what is one thing that nature has been teaching you lately?

Kris Tompkins (2:36)

How tiny I am in the arc of things, in nature, and it puts everything in its rightful place in terms of importance, in terms of my role in things, because I'm pretty tough on myself. I just, you know, I work like a dog and I realize that I am just this little bitty cog out there. And that for some reason makes me feel perfectly wonderful that I'm so tiny.

And the only place to get that is in nature.

Willow Defebaugh (3:11)

It's funny you say that.

I'm going to Spalbard in a couple of weeks and I've been thinking a lot about my intention for the trip. And the thing that keeps coming up is that I just want to feel small. We don't have enough of that, I think, in our world today, as places and things that make us feel small. And nature is so beautifully gifted at that.

Kris Tompkins (3:30)

Yeah. And in fact, I think in this age of modernity and technology, you're encouraged, as an individual, to feel as large as possible, rather than something that you're so much a part of something. Every breath you take, every step you make, and you're going to feel tiny up in the Arctic. You'll be pleased.

Willow Defebaugh (3:54)

I can't wait.

And, I mean, how much of our suffering comes from this, trying to make ourselves big all the time. It's exhausting.

Kris Tompkins (4:02)

It's exhausting and it's actually counterproductive. And you lose sight of being brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents, to mice, to every other species out there, 3,000 year old trees, it doesn't matter. Once you lose that connection, we do so at our peril, which is really counterintuitive for most people. They have to conquer nature to feel safe.

Yeah.

Willow Defebaugh (4:37)

I was really delighted to discover that one common thread between us is deep ecology. And I'm curious how you sort of think about that in your own life today and what it means to you.

Kris Tompkins (4:50)

First of all, Arne Ness, the kind of the father of the intellectual creation of the idea of a deep ecological mind, was a good friend of ours. So I was able to hear him speak about, what is the floor of a deep ecological mind? And it really is so simple to me, in my version, is that all life has intrinsic value.

It's so easy to say it, but if you actually believe it, it really throws the brakes on a lot of your, the way you look at things, the decisions that you make, it really asks a lot of us, once you take that on.