The Power of Endurance

August 22, 2022
Owl Feather Farm, San Juan Island

All the way to the moon.
That’s how far Owl Feather Farm’s Toyota 4Runner Sylvia has gone. Farther, actually—she just passed 300,000 miles, and it’s only 238,000 miles to Luna, so Sylvia’s on her way back. To put it another way, she’s been around the world more than a dozen times.
Not bad for a vehicle almost old enough to qualify for a “classic” license plate. If Sylvia were a person, she could have a bunch of kids running around.
Sylvia Car mileage over 300,000

All the way to the moon and part way back

Eric should have mentioned that to skeptics and naysayers when he bought her 23 years ago, in 1999. His progressive and fiscally conservative friends were aghast. You bought a full-size SUV? $36,000? You paid cash? Trying to wreck the environment and your bank account simultaneously?
The choice of a new 4Runner was based on durability, ruggedness—Sylvia has traveled about 10,000 miles on 4WD roads in the West, roads sometimes so bad that passengers have left the vehicle and refused to ride—and trouble-free endurance. The average American has had four or five cars in the past 23 years, so compare their financial adventures to ours. As for the environment: What is the carbon footprint of manufacturing four new vehicles? BTW, Sylvia still gets 20 mpg.
View of sylvia car in a field of grass

Sylvia, at her favorite place, Hart Mountain, Oregon

Our civilization is filled with many such dichotomies. In Europe, one sees thousands—millions—of stone buildings that are centuries old. In America, we build homes from “sustainable” engineered lumber that will fall down in less than a lifetime… and building codes FORBID using stone structurally. Our society places little value on long-term anything; it’s all about quick clicks, going viral and coming up with the next killer app. When Eric bought Sylvia, AOL was a killer app so… take your killer apps and, well, kill them.

Joseph Pilates spent a half-century creating, teaching and
earning global adoption of his body-strength exercise system. What
if we all spent decades on something meaningful, like health or good
old-fashioned reliability? Let’s see if any of us can go 300,000 miles.

—Eric Lucas

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