Grant Gerhard
fort collins, colorado
Throughout my life, I have cherished the power that short poignant phrases can have on our identity and the way we lead our lives. Some people carry them as mantras for centeredness, others as reminder tattoos like ‘carpe diem’. For the first time, with Give’r and their gear, I feel like the gear I own can carry a powerful message more purposeful than anything else I own: To live life earnestly, to reach out and grab life by the horns, to just Give’r.
Moving out to Fort Collins for college, I grew impassioned to ‘Give’r’ on the weekends as an alternative to partying. Climbing, skiing, very rarely catching a trout, and just getting myself to places I’d never been before were what energized my life. After graduation and summer employment, I was fortunate to have a girlfriend ingenious enough to hatch a plan for a year off - what could be described as a year based on living with a Give’r attitude: traveling the West in a camper, climbing in Utah and Yosemite, checking off Machu Picchu in Argentina, and making a lot of memories and new friends. As I settle down into a life a little more ‘9 to 5’, I hope I can continue to keep the Give’r attitude as a guiding principle to my life.