This wasn’t just any parka, but a Patagonia Fitz Roy down (made from Traceable Down: 800-fill-power goose down) parka. According to the catalog it was designed for serious alpine climbers — to wear during extended freezing belays or high-altitude emergency bivouacs. 

Anything but a serious alpine climber, I am a committed wilderness explorer. Lately the wilderness I explore is vastly internal. I get there through the “outer wilderness”— in Southern Utah during a solitary walk in a familiar canyon, or looking up through the universe on a moonless, often cold, desert night. Or sitting in a camp chair in the winter desert awed watching cliff light pass through the entire spectrum of red, as the sun sets.

For me, the parka is perfect and I feel “called.”