In my 25 year-old Lands’ End coat. Top & bottom left photos: Scotland, 2007. Bottom right photos: today.
Dear Lands’ End:
Tomorrow this coat is being donated to a coat drive at my 8 year-old daughter’s elementary school. It’s a big moment for me, and I have to say “thank you.”
I was given this coat as a Christmas gift from my aunt my senior year in high school. My senior year was in 1996.
In this coat, I have:
- backpacked in Scotland (see the photos of me dancing on tree stumps and hugging trees at Blair Castle and bracing myself against the wind at Kiltrock Waterfall
- cross country skiied on the frozen Talkeetna River in Alaska and on trails in Vermont in 6 degrees at sunset
- paddled in a canoe in an eely bay, and listened to the rock band Great Big Sea at a pub in a schoolhouse in Cape Negro, Canada
- horsebacked on a 14+ mile trail ride through rivers and beneath golden aspens in October in Montana
- downhill skiied on multiple slopes in North Carolina, Colorado, and Vermont
- winter hiked in weather and in places I had no business being during moose hunting season
- met the new year of my 30th birthday on a foggy South Carolina beach
- pushed a stroller through the snow with my first baby in it–my soulmate dog, Scout, by my side
- built snowmen in the front yard of our house in the NC mountains with my daughters
- and so much more
I love this 25 year-old coat so damn much. But because y’all build things to last, it can still keep some other person warm and dry this winter.
Lands’ End, y’all make good stuff. Thank you.
