Mountain Made + Plastic-free

A Message from our Founder & CEO, Joshua Onysko:

Alpine Provisions was born out of reasons very personal to me. You could even say that it is the embodiment of everything I value about life on this beautiful planet.

Ostensibly, I started Alpine Provisions because I wanted to offer the world access to affordable, sustainable, organic products ­— but that’s just a front. The real reason I started this company is to give the next generation an opportunity to know and love nature by providing true wilderness experiences.

When I was 16 I dropped out of school. I just didn’t fit in where I lived (the suburbs). I was a proverbial fish out of water, and it felt like I was suffocating. I bought a 1973 VW camper, restored it, and made plans to move to Vermont. 

As vintage buses do, mine broke down three times on the way up to my destination. By the time I arrived, it was October. The leaves had turned, and everything was bathed in a golden, auspicious glow. I knew I was on to something life-changing.

It took a few weeks to find a job and a home, but I was happily living out of my van with my dog. Things were uncomplicated, and I felt more like myself than I knew was even possible. One morning my dog and I took a walk up a wooded, mountain trail. After about an hour I realized that I was hearing silence for the very first time in my life.  Not the absence of noise, but the absence of man-made sounds. This silence was the absence of commerce, of steel and asphalt, of rubber meeting road, an absence of all the time-space agreements we organize our lives around. 

What I could hear was birdsong. I could hear the breeze through the trees, and a creek babbling nearby.  I could feel the soft body of the earth, and when I did, something wiry and tight unwound in my own body.  A sense of calm washed over me. Not only could I think clearly, but I could know clearly. I had an epiphany: the mountains are my native element; they are my home.

By the following Autumn, I moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming where I spent three years exploring every nook and cranny of the Tetons. I lived in cabins, chopped wood, and grew my own food. I felt alive and free.

Later, I moved to Boulder, Colorado where I bought and restored a cedar A-frame. I taught myself how to grow a garden in adverse, mountain conditions. I raised chickens, goats, and honeybees. All living beings on my land thrive there, just as I do. 

It was on a hike in the nearby Indian Peaks Wilderness, when I reflected on the gratitude I feel for my life in the mountains, that I began thinking about what I could do to create the most positive impact for future generations. 

I believe that if we want to improve the future of this planet, we have to show our youth there is more to the world than the constructed reality of social media and the constant demands that ping and buzz and direct our attention toward our little screens. We must inspire kids to value leadership over power, and stewardship over ownership. Yet, how can we expect future generations to be stewards of this planet if they don’t have the opportunity to explore it?  

My current contribution to this conundrum is to create a scholarship that helps get under-served youth into the woods, where they can breathe mountain air and learn about the sacredness of this planet. It is our youth’s birthright to know what it’s like to climb mountains, traverse valleys, hear silence, see sunsets, and jump off rocks into cold, mountain lakes.

The Alpine Provisions Scholarship Fund is fueled by a portion of all our sales. It provides Outward Bound Leadership adventures to young adults.

Alpine Provisions’ products are created with the world’s finest, sustainably-sourced ingredients, and are scented with the finest saps, oils, and flowers the mountains have to offer. They are designed to elicit your own, joyful connection to nature, even if the jungle you’re navigating that day happens to be made of concrete.

I call that a win/win.

The world becomes a better place the moment we choose to make it so.

Sincerely,