Speaker 1: This is Me Eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by on x Hunt creators are
Speaker 1: the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the
Speaker 1: Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor
Speaker 1: where you stand with on x okay rue Map. You're
Speaker 1: finally here at long last. Um, we're gonna get We're
Speaker 1: gonna get to you big time. But we'd like to
Speaker 1: often talk about just some juvenile stuff before we get rolling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but just throwing any comments you got. But uh, I
Speaker 1: wanted I need to catch him with the because there's
Speaker 1: some things I haven't talked with you about, like for real,
Speaker 1: we haven't talked about um out filming doss Boat season
Speaker 1: two dose boat. That's right, I wanted to call it
Speaker 1: dose boat. I didn't come up with that. Did someone
Speaker 1: shut you down? Well? I think Josh Pristine came up
Speaker 1: with that because he's super good at name and stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: he's good at making long sentences, but he's very good
Speaker 1: at a very short things. So I thought it was
Speaker 1: great that season two, like doss Boat would become dose Boat.
Speaker 1: But I've been educated on the fact that you can't
Speaker 1: just name a show something new because people don't find it.
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking doss boat season two, dose boat. Um,
Speaker 1: but you were out filming that, you could say seasoned
Speaker 1: dose maybe no, to keep it a little shorter. No, No,
Speaker 1: you don't like that. Uh what how did it go?
Speaker 1: I mean, were you excited about it? I was very excited? Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I maintained my excitement to um. But we
Speaker 1: we had some tough fishing. We had we had fun
Speaker 1: building adding the stuff to the boat. We did not
Speaker 1: have tough fishing. And as I left, I told the
Speaker 1: crew you will now have tough fishing, not because of you,
Speaker 1: because what you're going to do. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know why you cast that, you know, cloud
Speaker 1: of pests pessimism, because we used to go up now
Speaker 1: and then and think we're going to do that and
Speaker 1: cash that hatch in the dark. Yeah, what we would
Speaker 1: do is, uh, get swarmed by unbelievable amounts of biting insects. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you'd hear fish now and then, and you
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time trying in the dark to
Speaker 1: get your back cast untangled from the alders. And see,
Speaker 1: I've got more skills than that, so I didn't have
Speaker 1: that problem thrue. What I was there trying to do
Speaker 1: is there's a bug called the Hexagenia and it's a
Speaker 1: giant mayfly. It stands huge sons of bitches, almost two
Speaker 1: inches on top of the water. I mean, it literally
Speaker 1: looks like a little sailboat going down the water. And
Speaker 1: they're very attracted to your garage door. The light. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you have like a light your garage, you wake
Speaker 1: up one summer day and all of a sudden, they're
Speaker 1: all over your yard light and somehow stuck to your
Speaker 1: garage door. I remember that from being a youngster there
Speaker 1: when the hash on certain years when it can be
Speaker 1: very very thick, and it will litill congrete under the lights,
Speaker 1: and I was told actually that they'll they'll end up
Speaker 1: on the sidewalk underneath the lights because they think that's
Speaker 1: the surface of the water because there's a bit of
Speaker 1: reflection there. But they were saying, they were saying in
Speaker 1: some of those northern Michigan towns, Yeah, so the light
Speaker 1: is reflecting on the sidewalk right, that's where it's hitting.
Speaker 1: And so even though the light might sort of attract them.
Speaker 1: It's the fact that they're seeing that sort of shiny
Speaker 1: surface that's under the light in the darkness all around that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even though they must have thought the water was vertical.
Speaker 1: Any tiny little continue they can be so thick that
Speaker 1: they'll bring out the no plows to scoot off the
Speaker 1: bugs off these sidewalks. Oh my god. Yeah, is it
Speaker 1: stink too. I'm guessing there's got to be some sort
Speaker 1: of It wasn't that thick when I was there, so
Speaker 1: I didn't get to experience that. I was happy and
Speaker 1: almost just stories of cars crashing, yeah, from the slickness.
Speaker 1: Well that and I grew up there. I was there
Speaker 1: twenty years. I never saw any of this ship. I
Speaker 1: never saw anything. Things happened, though I grew up telling
Speaker 1: people that they happen. You were doing other things after
Speaker 1: ten pm. See, that's the thing. It only comes off
Speaker 1: like like thirty minutes after dark. And in northern Michigan
Speaker 1: at the end of June, I mean literally, you're out
Speaker 1: there at ten thirty and you're like, I can still see,
Speaker 1: you know, twilight in the sky, and once it got
Speaker 1: completely dark and this is it's like eleven and finally
Speaker 1: you shine the light on the water and there you go.
Speaker 1: You can they're starting to float down the river, and
Speaker 1: in the right conditions it brings up a lot of
Speaker 1: the fish and a lot of the big fish, and
Speaker 1: some of these rivers, these fish can intake like I
Speaker 1: forget what it is like fort of their annual you know,
Speaker 1: dietary intake annual calories in like a week or two
Speaker 1: when they get to feed on these giant bucks, right,
Speaker 1: so very important food source. And unfortunately for me, we
Speaker 1: got hammered with like thirty six hours of rain and
Speaker 1: the temperature went from like high of ninety to a
Speaker 1: high of like fifty five and it just made the
Speaker 1: trout sulk. They just went to the bottom and went
Speaker 1: put a pout. They put a potty face on and
Speaker 1: didn't want to do anything. So we were trying to everything.
Speaker 1: I mean, we were throwing you know, spinners and rappolas,
Speaker 1: and the only thing I didn't throw was a as
Speaker 1: a nightcrawler. I probably should have. But the last day
Speaker 1: we um changed gears and went out to a lake
Speaker 1: where there where there was known to be some good
Speaker 1: small amount fishing, and we caused some small amount. No. No,
Speaker 1: I was going full Matt Elliott. You were just trying
Speaker 1: to cat fish. Uh the boat. So the boat for
Speaker 1: the boat for dose boat is a boat that I
Speaker 1: knew all through growing up. One of my fishing mentors
Speaker 1: down the lake from me, a guy named John Gary
Speaker 1: had he all. He bought this boat the year before
Speaker 1: I was born. He bought in n and it still
Speaker 1: has all the registration stickers on it going back to
Speaker 1: seventy No, because like you buy him in blocks of years.
Speaker 1: But anyways, the first one that counts for seventy three
Speaker 1: and then paces all down the side of the boat
Speaker 1: and then it's like in four year increments or however
Speaker 1: they do the registration stickers, they're still all on there.
Speaker 1: When he died, we got his boat and it sat
Speaker 1: in my mom's pole or outside my mom's pole, bron
Speaker 1: for twenty years. And then we refurbished the boat and
Speaker 1: that's our new fishing boat. It's a very seaworthy vessel.
Speaker 1: I mean, with that trans and redone and the new
Speaker 1: engine on it. It was I was glad we had
Speaker 1: to take the engine off because we were floating it
Speaker 1: down the river, which is like, you know, part of
Speaker 1: the fun of this show is that you know you're
Speaker 1: gonna take a boat. It's not meant to go float
Speaker 1: down the river. Take the engine off of it. And
Speaker 1: then and then, because of the way the boats shaped
Speaker 1: and the way you row a boat down a river,
Speaker 1: you go down backwards. You're still looking forwards, but the
Speaker 1: boat itself is oriented, you know, backwards like pictures that
Speaker 1: the current. You want to have the ability to not
Speaker 1: go the speed of the current. Yeah, so the current
Speaker 1: slipping under the curvature of the bow right. Um, it
Speaker 1: was tricky to row. It's such a narrow beam on
Speaker 1: that boat that it made the oars seem very heavy
Speaker 1: because you had much more shaft at the oar outside
Speaker 1: of the oar lock versus inside. We got it done,
Speaker 1: We figured it out. It was fun. I was just
Speaker 1: hoping the whole time. I was thinking, like, is John
Speaker 1: Gary looking down from the heavens thinking like this is
Speaker 1: cool that you guys try to do. He was an
Speaker 1: eccentric dude, John Gary. Uh. He didn't understand why it's
Speaker 1: had collars, and he would cut the collars off his
Speaker 1: collared shirts instead of wearing a T shirt. He just
Speaker 1: had all the shirts. He removed the college and I
Speaker 1: don't know why it's there. I'm like I don't either,
Speaker 1: and so he would just cut it off. And one
Speaker 1: time I was at a he um. He was old,
Speaker 1: and I was at his house and he told me
Speaker 1: he needed he wanted to just have a little bit
Speaker 1: easier time with money, and he said, I will sell
Speaker 1: you this house and everything in it, he said, right
Speaker 1: down to my shoes, for seventy five dollars, the catch
Speaker 1: being I live here till I die. And that would
Speaker 1: have been a very very smart financial move for me
Speaker 1: to have made, but I just dismissed it, and then
Speaker 1: later realized what a missed that was. Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: have made a lot of money. You probably can't buy
Speaker 1: a garage on that lake for seventy five dollars anymore.
Speaker 1: I became residential. So what happened to the place? Oh,
Speaker 1: doctor bought it and fix it all up and changed
Speaker 1: and tore down his fish, tore down his fish shed,
Speaker 1: let his boat launch go to ship. What's funny is
Speaker 1: this guy? My brother is a doctor, but uh and
Speaker 1: one day we met him, were walking down the beach
Speaker 1: and my brother has nothing on but a pair of
Speaker 1: cut off denim shorts and it just looks like, you know, something,
Speaker 1: the cat dragged in and so we get to this
Speaker 1: guy's place. An eccentric dude. He's an eccentric guy. He
Speaker 1: doesn't play by the rules. Whatever their rules are, he doesn't.
Speaker 1: He doesn't even know what they are. But we get
Speaker 1: there and we meet this guy. It's like, oh, this
Speaker 1: guy about John Gary's house. And so we're talking about
Speaker 1: John and us growing up in and around the house.
Speaker 1: And the guy introduced himself as whatever, like doctor or
Speaker 1: young you know, and my brother goes, well, I'm Dr Ronella,
Speaker 1: and the guy thought he was messing with it was funny.
Speaker 1: All right, Rue, Um, we'll talk more about Dulse Bowl later.
Speaker 1: I don't want to waste all your time, I know
Speaker 1: I'm here. First off, how do you have the name?
Speaker 1: Are you eat? Well? It's actually short for Roulette, like
Speaker 1: Russian roulette. Yeah, yeah, like literally on your mom and
Speaker 1: dad and you Roulette totally uh. And there's no story.
Speaker 1: I wish there was a story. Roulette, Yes, Roulette, like
Speaker 1: the game I was taking Roulette, like in Russian Roulette.
Speaker 1: But there's also the game Roulette, both games which is
Speaker 1: a financial version of Russia, both games of chance. But
Speaker 1: no that I wish there was a story. But there
Speaker 1: wasn't a story. I always asked my mom, like, so
Speaker 1: why did you Because you know, when you're a kid,
Speaker 1: no one, you know, people say, oh, that's such a
Speaker 1: pretty name. But as I got older, people were like,
Speaker 1: so did your parents gamble a lot? Did they mean?
Speaker 1: And and like I'd be in these business meetings and
Speaker 1: like my name became the punchline. Why don't you switch
Speaker 1: it back to roulette? Well, because I don't always want
Speaker 1: to be a punch line, but like it's just it's
Speaker 1: just it's a crazy ye you can see that you
Speaker 1: get sick of. Even if I had a great story,
Speaker 1: I would go for it. But because there's no story,
Speaker 1: I just feel like want want, Like people are kind
Speaker 1: of let down, you know, they anticipate that I'm gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, talk about some wild Vegas conception night, and
Speaker 1: they didn't like win you in a game of Roulette?
Speaker 1: You need to do? You need to do? And me
Speaker 1: to find out it might be like, oh they're not
Speaker 1: my parents. Yeah, well there there's definitely some narrative there,
Speaker 1: but um but yeah, I just you know, rue you know,
Speaker 1: came together for me around like my mid twenties, and
Speaker 1: I just just feel really solid, like being like a
Speaker 1: two syllable name route map, so it's great. Have you
Speaker 1: ever met another roulette Roulette map that's even weirder, I
Speaker 1: know because rue is like French street and then last
Speaker 1: name map with two ps. So I have grown into
Speaker 1: this street map navigational name. So it works branding a
Speaker 1: lot of symbolism there, definitely. Uh, I want to ask
Speaker 1: you one more question for I asked my main questions
Speaker 1: before I set the table here. Uh, your dad was
Speaker 1: a cowboy. Yeah, he considered himself a cowboy for sure.
Speaker 1: I am definitely the first generation Californian. My dad came
Speaker 1: from Texas, um. His dad was a cattle rancher, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's something that I totally took for granted
Speaker 1: and didn't really come to understand that there were so
Speaker 1: many people like my dad who came from the South.
Speaker 1: But the thing that was really unique about my dad
Speaker 1: is that he brought along in a really active way
Speaker 1: his love for the outdoors. And so even though you know,
Speaker 1: my parents came to Oakland and as many African Americans
Speaker 1: did between you know, the World War two through the
Speaker 1: early seventies, he you know, he had the place in Oakland,
Speaker 1: but he wanted to have a place where he could
Speaker 1: pursue you know, his outdoor passions. So we had this
Speaker 1: ranch with about fifteen acres when I was little, and
Speaker 1: we had cows and we had pigs, and that was
Speaker 1: that was you know, his that was his his place
Speaker 1: where he got his life together. But I read somebody
Speaker 1: you being embarrassed he had he had dead pigs hanging
Speaker 1: over yeah, because you know, we'd bring that stuff back
Speaker 1: to Oakland, you know, and like the garage would be open,
Speaker 1: you know, and there'd be you know, animals hanging and
Speaker 1: asan uh in the garage and the bus would pass
Speaker 1: by and I'd be mortified. But but yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it was really It's one of those things you just
Speaker 1: don't realize how special it was to have had that
Speaker 1: really unique background, um even you know for me in Oakland, UH,
Speaker 1: to be able to have those connection points both you know,
Speaker 1: in an urban setting, but also you know, to be
Speaker 1: able to be in a wild place and in a
Speaker 1: family that truly valued hunting and fishing and harvesting, um
Speaker 1: all kinds of things. And it's been a big, wonderful
Speaker 1: journey through my work to help bring those things back
Speaker 1: to more people and to recreate those opportunities for more people,
Speaker 1: you know, so that we can you know, just help
Speaker 1: people get their lives together and help people get more
Speaker 1: connected to what's really real about nature. You know what
Speaker 1: winds up making this relier? I said, like to set
Speaker 1: the scene, there's a there's a part about this conversation
Speaker 1: that makes me uncomfortable because we're gonna talk about like
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about race, okay, and we're talking about
Speaker 1: Afro outdoors and so I'm sorry outdoor afterca people people
Speaker 1: do that all the time too. Yeah, I apologize. People
Speaker 1: call us man eater all the time. Uh. When growing up, okay,
Speaker 1: I grew up in a very like like strictly white
Speaker 1: setting for the most part um, and the thing that
Speaker 1: you were taught to strive for was like total color blindness.
Speaker 1: That was sort of the north star. And it would
Speaker 1: that you would never sit it would be like that.
Speaker 1: It would just be the thing you would never ever
Speaker 1: do that you would sit with someone and say, um,
Speaker 1: you're black, how does how do you feel about this?
Speaker 1: That would be like ship. You would never do that,
Speaker 1: even even though, to be honest with you, the only
Speaker 1: thing in your head is like super aware. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: thinking it. Oh, yeah, you're like, I'm talking to I'm
Speaker 1: talking to a black woman. I don't want to mess
Speaker 1: up like what, I don't know, she might have a
Speaker 1: totally different worldview, but don't ask. Don't ask because they're
Speaker 1: all color blind, right, And I'm still a little bit
Speaker 1: stuck in that. Yeah, well you're gonna have to get
Speaker 1: over it in this conversation because I want you to talk.
Speaker 1: I want you to see me. You know, it's not complicated,
Speaker 1: like it's okay to have difference, It's okay. What do
Speaker 1: you say here being like I'm talking to a white dude. No,
Speaker 1: I'm talking to somebody who loves the outdoors and I
Speaker 1: want to connect on that. So how do we get there?
Speaker 1: How do we get there to talk about? How do
Speaker 1: we get there where it's let me cut set another
Speaker 1: thing before I'm starting to with Fosburg the other day,
Speaker 1: who I believe you've been on the phone with. He's
Speaker 1: the presidency of TRCP. Yeah, and I was telling him,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I was giving him like what I recognized
Speaker 1: as a problem because we were trying to have you
Speaker 1: on a long time ago, but we got derailed by COVID,
Speaker 1: and I was like, man, I hope. I mean, you
Speaker 1: knew that you were scheduled come out, but I'm like,
Speaker 1: I hope. I feel now that it's become like a
Speaker 1: thing where it's like a forced conversation when it would
Speaker 1: have before been like a more natural but now everybody's
Speaker 1: hackles her up. And now you're like, like, by talking
Speaker 1: about something, you sort of get crucified. You get crucified
Speaker 1: to not talk. Some people are gonna be pissed that
Speaker 1: you're not talking about race. You're gonna be pissed that
Speaker 1: you are talking about race. Oh now you're interested in race?
Speaker 1: And what was like, just be glad she's coming out.
Speaker 1: But but but let's let's really I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's important that people know our origin story here. You know,
Speaker 1: like I actually reached out to your team last fall,
Speaker 1: and I reached out because I had seen your show
Speaker 1: and actually I had heard about your podcast well before that.
Speaker 1: I was with some colleagues who I work with on
Speaker 1: the board for the Wilderness Society, and you know, we're
Speaker 1: just sitting at you know, um this conference and we're
Speaker 1: talking about you know, podcasts that we all listened to. Inevitably,
Speaker 1: we get to that conversation like what are you listening
Speaker 1: to because it's a way of getting to know people.
Speaker 1: And someone told me that I should listen to Meat
Speaker 1: Eater and it was with this disclaimer, right, but it
Speaker 1: was like, with this disclaimer, it's like, yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: really cool, Like it's not like just about you know,
Speaker 1: you know, just the stereotype of people who you know,
Speaker 1: hunt and fish. And I'm like, well, look, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm already with it, you know, so I'm I'm
Speaker 1: definitely just interested just because I'm interested in that topic
Speaker 1: and with my background. So I listened to your show
Speaker 1: and then I saw that you had a show on Netflix,
Speaker 1: of course, and I watched that and I realized, like
Speaker 1: we had so much common language and so much common language.
Speaker 1: That was really about how helping people understand their possibilities
Speaker 1: of being in the world and understanding wildlife more and
Speaker 1: living in harmony with it, but also as a way
Speaker 1: to connect with other people across difference. And that resonated
Speaker 1: so deeply with me that I thought about writing you
Speaker 1: for a couple of weeks until I actually did, and
Speaker 1: I just you know, I sent one of those you
Speaker 1: know emails, you know, via your contact us link on
Speaker 1: your I mean, you know it's one of the yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you just you just send it off into the night.
Speaker 1: You know, you have no idea who's gonna read it.
Speaker 1: If someone will read it, it gets it lands in
Speaker 1: there amidst a lot of emails, photos of mangled fingers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all kinds of things. Because I'm the recipient of those
Speaker 1: kinds of emails. Like people write us for all kinds
Speaker 1: of reasons, to partner with us, to pour their souls
Speaker 1: out to us, to you know, talk about race. All
Speaker 1: of you know, we've been very fortunate. That may change
Speaker 1: after this call or this interview. But but I think
Speaker 1: that for some reason, and I have I have some
Speaker 1: suspicions about what that reason is. Is because our Dafro
Speaker 1: is so forward in its love story and its love
Speaker 1: story about community, and its love story about nature. And
Speaker 1: that's what I really got from your work, and that
Speaker 1: connected deeply with I felt the values that we have
Speaker 1: without dar Afro and that which I grew up with.
Speaker 1: So I reached out and a real human responded and said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'd love to talk to you on the phone and
Speaker 1: hear more about what you're thinking. And I didn't have
Speaker 1: a goal. I just wanted I just wanted to connect
Speaker 1: and I wanted you to see that Hey, I see you,
Speaker 1: and and uh, we'll see where the ripples go. And
Speaker 1: that that began last fall, and then we had our
Speaker 1: plans to do a turkey hunt together. Let's I forgot
Speaker 1: about that and I were going to go turkey on
Speaker 1: Yeah we should, And so we already had that plan
Speaker 1: for April, and then the whole shelter in place happened
Speaker 1: and then I got you know, everybody you know couldn't
Speaker 1: do anything um during that time, and so this was
Speaker 1: really our first opportunity UM, and we made I hate
Speaker 1: to interrupt, but I'm going to, but it's actually gonna
Speaker 1: work out in your favor because where I was planning
Speaker 1: to take you, I didn't quite know the zone very
Speaker 1: well and it took me quite a while to figure
Speaker 1: it out. Now, we did end up killing a turkey
Speaker 1: in the general area. Later, if you come back next year,
Speaker 1: I've got a dial Okay, okay, I'll be ready. UM.
Speaker 1: So I think it's important that people know that that
Speaker 1: this was one initiated by me to this had you know,
Speaker 1: a time frame that that began in advance of all
Speaker 1: of the kind of ship show we're living through right now. Um,
Speaker 1: Yet I'm grateful. And that's how I felt. As soon
Speaker 1: as the pandemic hit, as soon as the whole sweep
Speaker 1: of Black Lives Matter really kind of landed upon us
Speaker 1: as a country, I just felt so grateful to be
Speaker 1: doing work that feels in a lot of ways more
Speaker 1: urgent than ever before. Um. When the sheltering place happened
Speaker 1: and I saw people getting outside and getting into parks,
Speaker 1: I mean I saw kids on bicycles and on rollerblades,
Speaker 1: and I saw families out in nature. I saw our
Speaker 1: parks be overwhelmed because I think that people had this
Speaker 1: this primal awareness that they needed to connect with nature
Speaker 1: for their healing. In that moment. While you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to go to a restaurant or a movie theater,
Speaker 1: people knew, they knew they had nature. And so we
Speaker 1: began just making sure that folks knew that we were
Speaker 1: there for them, We were there for families, and we
Speaker 1: were also there to help people recognize that nature is
Speaker 1: not necessarily in a place where you go and drive to,
Speaker 1: but it's all around you. It's your window sill. Like
Speaker 1: I was, just like you know, in the beginning of
Speaker 1: the sheltering place. I looked outside and I saw my
Speaker 1: lazy pit bull laying on the grass like she always does.
Speaker 1: I saw, you know, the blue scrub jay coming through
Speaker 1: like it always does. And I just again, you know,
Speaker 1: grounded myself to take my cueue for how to be
Speaker 1: at this time. And that's like nature, and that's that's
Speaker 1: where I keep going back to in this time. And
Speaker 1: I think right now I think about Outdoor Afro and
Speaker 1: just my whole you know, reason for being with Outdoor
Speaker 1: Afro is really about how I can help through this
Speaker 1: work more people find common ground. And I think people
Speaker 1: are looking for that right now. Explain the explain the
Speaker 1: mission of Outdoor Afro, but then also tell me what
Speaker 1: you're going to tell me about. Um, when I said
Speaker 1: that the the north star of like total color blindness,
Speaker 1: like convinced me that that's not the north star anymore. Well,
Speaker 1: Outdoor Afro is two very different questions. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: I got you. I got here. Okay, I'm tracking. Uh So,
Speaker 1: Outdoor Afro celebrates and inspires black people to reconnect to
Speaker 1: the outdoors. And reconnect as a really intentional word that
Speaker 1: I use because as I kind of moved through the
Speaker 1: journey of developing outdoor afro um, you know that was
Speaker 1: born in social media. I just had a personal blog
Speaker 1: and I started talking about growing up wild and all
Speaker 1: the things that I used to do in the outdoors.
Speaker 1: And what happened was that there were folks who responded
Speaker 1: back to me. And this is back in the first
Speaker 1: wave of social media. So the algorithms are all nice
Speaker 1: and flat. You didn't have to pay to play um,
Speaker 1: and you could literally and I did, from my kitchen
Speaker 1: table have this very intimate conversation about all the things
Speaker 1: that I loved about being in the outdoors and about
Speaker 1: my family traditions and the outdoors. And people responded back
Speaker 1: and they were like, you're telling my story. This is
Speaker 1: my life too. And that's when I realized that we
Speaker 1: had a visual representation problem, that we didn't see people
Speaker 1: who look like me or like my dad. Like my
Speaker 1: dad loved nature, he loved wildlife. But he never would
Speaker 1: have called himself a conservationist or an environmentalist ever, because
Speaker 1: that was just not where he took his cues from.
Speaker 1: He took his cues from his dad, who got it
Speaker 1: from his dad, and so on and so forth, and
Speaker 1: so it's really been for Outdoor Afro our effort to
Speaker 1: really help restore that sense of outdoor leadership and knowledge
Speaker 1: back to the home. I really want people to have
Speaker 1: their nature swagger, Like you go out and you know
Speaker 1: how to be, how to live, what to harvest, what
Speaker 1: to set aside, what to leave behind for poison, you know,
Speaker 1: like what, like how to really understand nature and not
Speaker 1: think about nature as someplace that you have to drive
Speaker 1: to and access through a parking lot and just be
Speaker 1: comfortable and be comfortable and respectful, you know at the
Speaker 1: end of the day. So I've had a lot of
Speaker 1: experiences through Outdoor Afro and connecting with people from all
Speaker 1: over all kinds, all walks of life, from children, two elders,
Speaker 1: and eventually people wanted to find communities of folks to
Speaker 1: get outside with. So we started what we called the
Speaker 1: Outdoor Affro Leadership Team. And for me, this was really
Speaker 1: disruptive because I didn't go for the wildlife biologist or
Speaker 1: you know, the eagle scout, the people who we traditionally
Speaker 1: think of as the experts in the outdoors. I went
Speaker 1: instead for the real estate broker, or the the preschool
Speaker 1: teacher or uh, the accountant the attorney, And then we
Speaker 1: even had military vets who said, Hey, I love nature
Speaker 1: and I want to share what I love about nature
Speaker 1: where I live with others in my community. And so
Speaker 1: I brought those folks together and we trained and and
Speaker 1: and really learned from one another about risk management, of course,
Speaker 1: and trip planning and logistics, but also things like, you know,
Speaker 1: how to tell our story in a different way, how
Speaker 1: to use you know, and harness social media and other
Speaker 1: mediums where we weren't present right now, but where we
Speaker 1: could you know, move the needle on, lifting up this
Speaker 1: other vision of how people who look like me could
Speaker 1: be out in nature, strong, beautiful and free. And um,
Speaker 1: it's really been phenomenal how that's grown. Um right now,
Speaker 1: we have you know, that started off as a group
Speaker 1: of about eleven people who said yes to being an
Speaker 1: out draft our leader. And every year, you know, we've
Speaker 1: grown incrementally, just taken the time to really learn about
Speaker 1: what we're doing and why we're doing it, and not
Speaker 1: getting bigger just to be bigger, you know, Like vanity
Speaker 1: metrics mean nothing to me, you know, because I see
Speaker 1: a lot of people being big and being wrong, you know,
Speaker 1: or being you know, unwieldy, and so we just grew
Speaker 1: incrementally our team and this class that we have this
Speaker 1: year is about ninety men and women from thirty states,
Speaker 1: and we have a participation network about forty people and
Speaker 1: they get out with us and they hike and they
Speaker 1: bike in the camp and the bird and they do
Speaker 1: all kinds of things. Um. And one of the things
Speaker 1: I want to continue to move the needle on is
Speaker 1: as people get more comfortable being in the outdoors, you know,
Speaker 1: how can we talk more about sustainably hunting and fishing
Speaker 1: and helping people really round out their experiences in the outdoors.
Speaker 1: And I'm actually relearning a lot of those skills right
Speaker 1: alongside them as my parents have passed away, um, you
Speaker 1: know several years now. Um. You know, you really need
Speaker 1: a community of people around you to pursue some of
Speaker 1: these activities that you know, as you describe, take a
Speaker 1: long time and take a lot of hands and a
Speaker 1: lot of equipment and uh and so the the on
Speaker 1: ramping can be pretty steep when you start talking about
Speaker 1: some sportsman's activities. So I'm looking forward to building more community,
Speaker 1: deliberate community around on that as well. Yeah, mentors are
Speaker 1: hard to come by they are you can build like
Speaker 1: a you know, and that's what I'm hoping that will do.
Speaker 1: That's right as I'm hoping we'll do is like really
Speaker 1: create you know, I've been calling it the B side
Speaker 1: of outdoor AFRO after dark or maybe before sign up UM,
Speaker 1: where we're you know, deliberately building community. And I've had
Speaker 1: some great conversations with California UM Fishing Wildlife to come
Speaker 1: up with ways and we can actually start folks, you know,
Speaker 1: at the phase of getting there, you know, hunter certifications
Speaker 1: and then moving them through the fall early winter to
Speaker 1: get a duck hunt you know, and a big feast
Speaker 1: at the end and and really bring people through the
Speaker 1: continuum of good education, UM, good conservation ethic UM harvesting seasonably,
Speaker 1: but also like getting their grub on at the end.
Speaker 1: So what is the what are participation rates? UM? Like
Speaker 1: I know that we have like for for fishing is
Speaker 1: a lot better, hunting is ten male female? Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: heard three African American. You know, it depends, you know,
Speaker 1: do you know the rates like now yeah? Yeah. And
Speaker 1: also I mean, you know, you kind of get to
Speaker 1: this question that I get asked a lot, like it's
Speaker 1: the why don't you know black people do blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: And I think it really has to do with who
Speaker 1: you're hanging around with, um, what you're you know, where
Speaker 1: your geographic area is, because you definitely see, for instance,
Speaker 1: in the South, you know, proportions, And so I really
Speaker 1: look at not like these like finite amounts in this
Speaker 1: big pie of how many people are doing an activity.
Speaker 1: I always measure like in proportion to people's population and
Speaker 1: their opportunity. Right, So if you have like a big
Speaker 1: population in an area of you know, black people, um,
Speaker 1: then you're gonna probably have higher rates of participation in
Speaker 1: all kinds of things, all kinds of outdoor activities, especially
Speaker 1: if those um access points are near where people live.
Speaker 1: And so I'd like to unpack those statistics a little
Speaker 1: bit because people will shoot me with the well there's
Speaker 1: zero zero point one percent of black people who go
Speaker 1: to Yosemite. I'm like, well, whoa whoa whoa? Wait, Like,
Speaker 1: is that like all of nature? Or is that like
Speaker 1: one park that is about four hours from where people live.
Speaker 1: And I think about you know, just the lives of
Speaker 1: busy working families, you know, on the weekends you may
Speaker 1: or may not have time off to go and drive
Speaker 1: someplace where you've never been, to do things you've never
Speaker 1: done before with people you've never met. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: a there's so many big asks in that, and so
Speaker 1: that's why whenever people choose to come out with us,
Speaker 1: I always start by thanking them, you know, thank you
Speaker 1: for saying yes to first of all, getting up from
Speaker 1: your warm bed on you know, a Sunday morning, maybe
Speaker 1: before the sun comes up. Thanks for saying yes to that.
Speaker 1: Thanks for getting in your car and finding this place.
Speaker 1: Because we know navigation is a huge challenge for people,
Speaker 1: especially when you get out to remote areas, and then
Speaker 1: you know, for trying something you've never done before and
Speaker 1: around people who you don't know, because you know, I've
Speaker 1: been there. I've been in the embarrassed one where everyone's
Speaker 1: got the skill and I don't um or you know,
Speaker 1: the physical abilities and I don't, you know, And so
Speaker 1: we spend a lot of time helping people to get
Speaker 1: prepared and to feel confident. And then once they're there,
Speaker 1: they're supported, you know, and they don't have to feel
Speaker 1: like they're the only one in the group you know
Speaker 1: who has to you know, know things and we don't,
Speaker 1: you know, have a competitive atmosphere, you know, where you've
Speaker 1: gotta you know, have the biggest, go the fastest, you know,
Speaker 1: bag the tallest um in order to feel successful. Um.
Speaker 1: And so when it comes to being seen, though, I
Speaker 1: think it's really important that we really see each other.
Speaker 1: And I think that when we really take the time
Speaker 1: to see each other, I think it opens the door
Speaker 1: for greater understanding and empathy and it reveals the core
Speaker 1: of the love store of what outdoor Afro is really about.
Speaker 1: I want you to see that I stand on the
Speaker 1: shoulders of you know, black people who you know made
Speaker 1: a way out of no way quite frankly, um, who
Speaker 1: you know, learned how to live off the land. UM,
Speaker 1: sometimes under to rest, but sometimes of their own choosing.
Speaker 1: And they did it in a really powerful and beautiful way.
Speaker 1: And that there's so much that's when I think about
Speaker 1: America and I think about you know, the ways that
Speaker 1: there's just these intertwined histories. UM. I think it's important
Speaker 1: to recognize that we have all been in this thing
Speaker 1: together for a long time. And even if we you know,
Speaker 1: didn't live in a neighborhood you know where you were
Speaker 1: necessarily integrated. I think the effect on the overall culture, um,
Speaker 1: the foods we eat, the music we listen to. It's
Speaker 1: undeniably um. You know, intersectional in the way that we've
Speaker 1: been in relationship in in a in a deliberate way
Speaker 1: for forever um. And so I gets something to be
Speaker 1: celebrated versus avoided. And I think that we can we
Speaker 1: can look at difference and not look at difference from
Speaker 1: a hierarchical point of view. Um. And I think that
Speaker 1: that's where, you know, we end up in these slippery
Speaker 1: slopes that if you notice it, then then somehow you're
Speaker 1: positioning a higher and a lower. And some people do,
Speaker 1: let's be real, But I think that it's some people
Speaker 1: do what I think something hierarchy. Yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: some people do. And I think that that you know
Speaker 1: is something that that we all manage. But again, I
Speaker 1: go back to this work as an opportunity to really
Speaker 1: free ourselves of those isms and those judgments that can
Speaker 1: somehow cloud are our way of getting to know one another.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the things that I say, um,
Speaker 1: and I'm saying more and more frequently. And you know,
Speaker 1: when I go out into nature, you know, the trees
Speaker 1: don't know that I am black. You know, the birds
Speaker 1: are gonna sing no matter how much money is in
Speaker 1: my bank account, and the flowers are gonna bloom no
Speaker 1: matter what my gender is or my political party. And
Speaker 1: so I feel like nature really gives us this broad
Speaker 1: platform to be but also to understand one another. Like
Speaker 1: when I was UM, I was in the Arctic refuge
Speaker 1: um with some friends and we had just landed um
Speaker 1: just beyond the Brooks Range on the Chilick River. We're gonna,
Speaker 1: we're gonna, you know, paddle down to um the ocean,
Speaker 1: and just when we landed, we had seen like this
Speaker 1: whole like biblical herd of porcupine cariboo, and we were
Speaker 1: just mesmerized. I've never seen that many you know, um caribou,
Speaker 1: any cariboo, but that many, that many hearts beating altogether. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you can't like, you can't be the same
Speaker 1: after seeing that. So after that had happened, we're just
Speaker 1: kind of standing there, stunned and you know, really mesmerized
Speaker 1: by just being in that landscape and having that experience.
Speaker 1: A beer pops up in camp and you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I honestly it was it was it was terrifying. It
Speaker 1: was shocking, and there were some people who, you know,
Speaker 1: do what humans like to do sometimes with charismatic mega fauna.
Speaker 1: And that's the reason, go away bear, you don't want
Speaker 1: to we hear bear clap clap clap um there, you know,
Speaker 1: and the bear spray got deployed and all that, and
Speaker 1: I'm like standing behind a raft, you know, as if
Speaker 1: that was gonna make a difference, and my knees were
Speaker 1: all shaken, and you know, and just literally no more
Speaker 1: than a minute or so because the bear just looked
Speaker 1: at us curiously. It was not aggressive at all, and
Speaker 1: it just you know, took a whiff of that you know,
Speaker 1: that Arctic air and just disappeared in the landscape. And uh,
Speaker 1: that was a moment where I had a hard reset
Speaker 1: of my humanity. I realized that I was in that
Speaker 1: bear's wild, and I think that there's this perception as
Speaker 1: humans that we are we are at cause in the wild.
Speaker 1: And it just reordered things for me in the right
Speaker 1: way that I was not at the top of the
Speaker 1: food chain first off, and had that bear decided to
Speaker 1: enjoy any of us for takeout, that that wild would
Speaker 1: continue to lumber on without any regard for its human
Speaker 1: passengers and that, Um, you know, that was just another
Speaker 1: of many lessons um that I've learned, um in this
Speaker 1: work that while I'm leading people and helping people to
Speaker 1: get outside, you know, I'm also sharing my revelations and
Speaker 1: my experiences to really help deepen more people's understanding about
Speaker 1: what it means to be in relationship with the wild
Speaker 1: and how you know, that bear. You know, we may
Speaker 1: not be you know, at at cause in that moment,
Speaker 1: but we have a responsibility to help protect you know,
Speaker 1: where that bear lives, and and to be with that
Speaker 1: bear in a way that's that's responsible for it to
Speaker 1: be able to stick around. Can you talk about uh,
Speaker 1: drowning because I think this is it was I was
Speaker 1: reading an interview with you, um, and you brought up
Speaker 1: You're kind of talk about like different relationships with different
Speaker 1: activities and how can different activities like how can there
Speaker 1: be a sort of racial bias toward different activities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great question. Have you ever read, um, did
Speaker 1: you have read read The Unbearable Lightness of Being by
Speaker 1: Kundra Milan Kundra a long time ago has a lot
Speaker 1: to do with it's kind of this condemnation of communism
Speaker 1: but in the unbearable lightness of being as a guy
Speaker 1: and as a girl friend. And the writer gets into
Speaker 1: when a parade goes by, like she grew up in
Speaker 1: um communist Czechoslovakia. I think I can. I think she
Speaker 1: grew up in communist Czechoslovakia. When she sees a parade,
Speaker 1: it means something very very different, very different than when
Speaker 1: the other person sees a prey. One's a celebration and
Speaker 1: another one is a holy ship. Yeah, one's imagining this
Speaker 1: sort of American Fourth July esque and one of us imagine, like,
Speaker 1: oh ship, here's the Communes showing off their military, you know,
Speaker 1: And like the word parade takes out something different. And
Speaker 1: I read this thing in this I think as you
Speaker 1: saying I can't here because you are and someone else
Speaker 1: talking about someone brought up swimming and pools like the
Speaker 1: historically to be pools that were just like flat out
Speaker 1: say like no black people can swim in this pool, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and now we have. And then you kind of linked
Speaker 1: this to drowning rates today. I think it's an interesting
Speaker 1: way for people to to begin to see a little
Speaker 1: bit of what we're talking about. Yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's no like it's no fantasy. You know that there
Speaker 1: was a time in a not too distant past when
Speaker 1: there were pools and beaches and public areas you know,
Speaker 1: I mean and and like public property. Yeah, public property,
Speaker 1: public beaches. Um. I think there was a bloody summer
Speaker 1: in Chicago where there were you know, people getting beaten
Speaker 1: for for trying to access the shoreline. Um. There have
Speaker 1: been beaches, um, everywhere where there has been restricted or excluded, um,
Speaker 1: you know, parts where black people could not be, There
Speaker 1: have been public pools, you know where black people were
Speaker 1: not allowed. And so the consequence of that is that
Speaker 1: today we have a drowning rate of black children who
Speaker 1: were drowning five times the rate of their black with
Speaker 1: their white peers ages five through nineteen. So, you know,
Speaker 1: the public health consequence that your grandmother or your mother
Speaker 1: wasn't able to learn how to swim and develop a
Speaker 1: relationship with water is still felt today. And so in
Speaker 1: response to that, one of the things that Outdoor Afro
Speaker 1: set out to do last year was to award swimmerships.
Speaker 1: And so we set out to get as many babies
Speaker 1: in the water as we could and um, I wanted
Speaker 1: to you know, get about seventies swimmerships out I call
Speaker 1: them swimmerships basically their swim scholarships for for lessons, and
Speaker 1: we were able to, with the support of a lot
Speaker 1: of folks, get nearly two hundred of those swimmerships to them.
Speaker 1: The reason why is because if a child doesn't know
Speaker 1: how to swim, they're not going to ease into a
Speaker 1: tippy kayak, they're not going to put a pole in
Speaker 1: a lazy lake, and they're not going to give a
Speaker 1: damn about plastic in the ocean. So it's not just
Speaker 1: about people's lives being saved, it's about that being such
Speaker 1: a cornerstone skill that until we can get people comfortable
Speaker 1: with water, they're just not gonna be able to pursue
Speaker 1: a wide variety of outdoor recreation activities, uh much less
Speaker 1: fishing um. And I just remember it was about ten
Speaker 1: years ago before outdoor aftro really was a thing, and
Speaker 1: I had gone out with a bunch of friends and
Speaker 1: we had rented a catam iran in the Caribbean Ocean,
Speaker 1: and and I thought, I mean, I was really comfortable.
Speaker 1: I'd I'd swim all my life, and our host had
Speaker 1: swam as well. But most of the people who were
Speaker 1: on that camera, and I don't think they really understood
Speaker 1: what they were getting into. And when the water became
Speaker 1: really choppy, um, even though people had their p f
Speaker 1: d s on, people were terrified in that moment and
Speaker 1: they couldn't enjoy it. You know, some people got sick.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was it was a disaster. But had
Speaker 1: those people had comfort and a feeling of of even
Speaker 1: you know, just steadiness around water, it would have been
Speaker 1: a totally different experience. And so that's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why out or Affro exists, is because we are
Speaker 1: responding to some of the historical barriers that were real,
Speaker 1: while also celebrating the fact that people did persist in
Speaker 1: learning how to swim, learning how to be in nature,
Speaker 1: folks like my dad for instance. And so we're you know,
Speaker 1: trying to remedy some of the past while also lifting
Speaker 1: up some of the figures in our history who were
Speaker 1: every bit the wilderness leaders. I think oftentimes about Harriet Tubman.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't think about her as a wilderness leader,
Speaker 1: but how did she get people moving across state lines
Speaker 1: in the cover of night and not no nature, not
Speaker 1: no not not know the sound of you know, the
Speaker 1: birds that may share warning you know, or where too,
Speaker 1: you know, stop and and and and eat or or
Speaker 1: what can you harvest from the landscape? Like how how
Speaker 1: could she have done that without nature knowledge? And so
Speaker 1: for her, for me, she you know, embodies a way
Speaker 1: that we can look at people in our history in
Speaker 1: a different way, you know, rebrand if you will, but really,
Speaker 1: you know, look at history of African and Black Americans
Speaker 1: um in an empowered way, you know, versus one that
Speaker 1: only needs saving. Interesting when you look at American history
Speaker 1: is uh, the rapid, like the rapid relatively recent urbanization
Speaker 1: of Blacks that if you go back a couple hundred years,
Speaker 1: I mean outside of their own choosing, but because they were, uh,
Speaker 1: your ancestors were like owned by people, and we're told
Speaker 1: what to do and where like intrinsically tied to nature
Speaker 1: without even like an option to not be tied to nature.
Speaker 1: But it's like working in agriculture, living in you know,
Speaker 1: situations with no running water, even like share cropping and
Speaker 1: things where you're working the soil and you're sort of
Speaker 1: like what you eat is directly dependent on what you
Speaker 1: do with your own hands. And then in the and
Speaker 1: then in the reconstruction era, like after the end of
Speaker 1: the Civil War that that these people who were like
Speaker 1: really connected to the seasons and natural systems for a
Speaker 1: need to find work into escape persecution went to northern
Speaker 1: cities to get manufacturing jobs. And it's funny, how I
Speaker 1: should say funny, just interesting how in a couple of
Speaker 1: generations are like even our associations would be, um, they
Speaker 1: like cities, right, So that was like a natural order
Speaker 1: of things, and we lose sight of sort of like
Speaker 1: the factors that led the demographics and sociological factors that
Speaker 1: lead people to be where they are in a way
Speaker 1: that in a very short period of time we look
Speaker 1: and there's this assumption like that's how you like it, right,
Speaker 1: and it's wrong, and that's and it's and it's a
Speaker 1: disruption absolutely, because you know, I read Isabelle where Wilkerson's
Speaker 1: book The Warmth of other Sons, and it talks about
Speaker 1: in painful detail, how people you know, had to basely
Speaker 1: black people were refugees in this country and jumped on
Speaker 1: on trains and and didn't get off until the train
Speaker 1: ran out in places like Chicago and New York and Oakland,
Speaker 1: uh in Los Angeles and created and and my my
Speaker 1: folks were a part of that that wave of that
Speaker 1: great migration, and it was really I mean when I
Speaker 1: think a lot about their beginnings, like they they did
Speaker 1: what's called hot bedding, you know where they work in
Speaker 1: the shipyards. Um. You know, as a family, you know,
Speaker 1: uncles and and you know Ken all shift doing shift work, yeah,
Speaker 1: doing shift work, and also sleeping and shifts in the
Speaker 1: same beds like so you know, the bed always stayed
Speaker 1: hot um. And I just think about like the grit
Speaker 1: um and the tenacity of people to you know, leave
Speaker 1: what what they loved, you know, to create something new,
Speaker 1: and and even those new places not being welcome place
Speaker 1: for them to be necessarily. But you're right and that
Speaker 1: you know, we are not generationally speaking, we are not
Speaker 1: more than a couple of generations away from that knowledge,
Speaker 1: that connection, that knowing nous with nature. And I feel
Speaker 1: like that's a huge job that outdoor afro Um you know,
Speaker 1: is responsible for. And that is it's not talking about
Speaker 1: the absence of but the presence of and how it's
Speaker 1: always been there. How if you look at you know,
Speaker 1: like all of the ways that black people have been
Speaker 1: in this country, we have been everywhere doing everything and
Speaker 1: if even if you don't see it in a magazine
Speaker 1: or if it's if you don't see the representation in
Speaker 1: a particular club or organization, it doesn't mean that it
Speaker 1: doesn't exist. And so that's you know, that's that's a
Speaker 1: huge part of the work is to tell a new narrative,
Speaker 1: and to tell a narrative that again is empowered and
Speaker 1: really helps us to find a way to we may
Speaker 1: not ever get back to those those places where we
Speaker 1: are completely. And then there's some parts of it, you know,
Speaker 1: as you as you pointed out, we don't want that's
Speaker 1: what that was. That's what I wanted to ask you next,
Speaker 1: because it's as I said that, after I said it,
Speaker 1: I realized sort of like a like a miss in
Speaker 1: my logic would be that I don't know, Let's say
Speaker 1: you're you know, you're a slave, and you're supposed to
Speaker 1: build the Egyptian pharaoh's tomb, right, and so you're forced
Speaker 1: to learn to be a stonemason, and you build these
Speaker 1: works of human engineering that will be celebrated, right for
Speaker 1: thousands of years. Does that person who was enslaved to
Speaker 1: build King Tut's tomb look and be like, now that
Speaker 1: was the life I learned Stonemasonry. By God, I was
Speaker 1: good at it? Or is it just like, uh, don't
Speaker 1: please don't invite me to be nostalgic about my agrarian
Speaker 1: background because I happened to be there like under force
Speaker 1: of a whip. So don't. I'm not gonna get like
Speaker 1: all you know, sentimental about living close to the land. Exactly.
Speaker 1: It's got to be tricky, well because a lot of people, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you go back and you want to you know,
Speaker 1: people go back and you maybe over embellished, you want
Speaker 1: to like accentuate uh, your hardships because it creates this
Speaker 1: personal narrative. Um. But that's the whole of the level. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is, it is, And again that's why I stay.
Speaker 1: I stay grounded in new narrative creation. You know, So
Speaker 1: going back in your family history and recognizing how you've
Speaker 1: been empowered doesn't negate the bad stuff, right How do
Speaker 1: we take the things that that actually could be in
Speaker 1: service of a better life right now and create something
Speaker 1: new for ourselves? Is what I think our ask is,
Speaker 1: you know, because I'm I you know, as much as
Speaker 1: I appreciate the ways that that that folks have had
Speaker 1: historical context, doesn't mean I need to go back to
Speaker 1: those places. Is um in every way. But I think
Speaker 1: that sometimes in our effort to distance ourselves from those
Speaker 1: bad things, we throw away the good stuff too. And
Speaker 1: so how do we because for instance, you know, for
Speaker 1: some people living you know, in the country, or you know,
Speaker 1: learning about you know, or being engaged with our food
Speaker 1: ways may feel backwards, right, it may feel like a
Speaker 1: lack of progress. And so what I what I hope
Speaker 1: to do through this work is to really help lift
Speaker 1: up that those skills, those abilities, and your quality of life,
Speaker 1: you know, is actually progressive in a way that you
Speaker 1: can live longer, you know, be be healthier, um and
Speaker 1: and find more joy and connection. So is there any
Speaker 1: is there any sentimentality for nature or is it all
Speaker 1: like um? Or is it is there any language of
Speaker 1: returning to or is it all framed as there's this
Speaker 1: thing out there that we haven't engaged in and it's
Speaker 1: beautiful and let's go find out about it. For for
Speaker 1: the folks in our community, let's also recognize that the
Speaker 1: outdoors and nature, wild, remote nature has not always been
Speaker 1: regarded as a safe place for black bodies. I remember
Speaker 1: I was I was about ten years old, and I
Speaker 1: was like watching a special about um civil rights movements,
Speaker 1: and you know, in the whole kind of timeline of
Speaker 1: various events happening, which you know, honestly don't feel a
Speaker 1: lot different than the life than what we're living through
Speaker 1: right now. And there was the there was a story
Speaker 1: of Himmett Till, you know. And then for those who
Speaker 1: don't know, em Matt Till was um, you know, a
Speaker 1: Chicago boy, and what people did when they moved to
Speaker 1: northern cities and they still had family living in the South,
Speaker 1: they would send their children to the South for the
Speaker 1: summertime so that parents could work, um and for various reasons, um,
Speaker 1: to maintain those familial connections. And so he like, you know,
Speaker 1: realize that about Emmett Till, So he had gone he
Speaker 1: was born in the North, Yeah, he was. He was.
Speaker 1: He was visiting his southern relatives and you know got
Speaker 1: you know, was misunderstood and ended up brutally. He made
Speaker 1: a he didn't have the he addressed a white woman
Speaker 1: without the appropriate deference, yeah, which was you know, fatal
Speaker 1: for for for young and he was a boy, beat
Speaker 1: him to death and tied him to a piece of
Speaker 1: mill equipment and threw him off a bridge. So so
Speaker 1: what happened and um, hearing that story and seeing how
Speaker 1: you know, his his mom wanted to have an open
Speaker 1: casket so that the world could see, you know, what
Speaker 1: had happened to her. Boy, the brutality of it, I was,
Speaker 1: you know, I was. I was shocked. And I remember
Speaker 1: going right to my dad after seeing that. And I
Speaker 1: had asked him, you know, because he lived in Texas
Speaker 1: all of his life, and I had asked him. I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, do you know of anyone who's
Speaker 1: been lynched? And he just leveled with me and he
Speaker 1: said all the time. And that helped me to get
Speaker 1: present at a really young age that there's been a
Speaker 1: disruption of a feeling of safety and belonging that exists
Speaker 1: in generational memory. You know, if your dad or if
Speaker 1: your grandfather can tell you firsthand stories and accounts of
Speaker 1: those types of things happening, and who you know still
Speaker 1: hold those fears of something happening to you. Um, we
Speaker 1: you know, we sent out door aftro sent um you
Speaker 1: know folks on all kinds of different adventures, whether it
Speaker 1: be Mount Whitney or kill Himanjaro. And I can't tell
Speaker 1: you that when those expeditioners go out, you know, just
Speaker 1: the real fear and concern that those families have for
Speaker 1: the safety of those folks for And I think that
Speaker 1: that's something that you know, we we we some groups
Speaker 1: can take for granted that you can go out and
Speaker 1: you can, you know, feel okay, and you might worry
Speaker 1: about wildlife to some extent if you're not experienced with it.
Speaker 1: But for black people, it's about being worried about other humans.
Speaker 1: I was I was talking to a writer one time
Speaker 1: who wrote a piece about being um about being black
Speaker 1: and being afraid to be on public lands, and I
Speaker 1: called him to ask him what, like what he meant, right?
Speaker 1: I wanted him to back it up, like what he
Speaker 1: meant when he said that. I could see that someone
Speaker 1: would say, Uh, let's say someone said I have concerns
Speaker 1: of being out in the woods on public land and
Speaker 1: getting shot by a hunter, And we could go and
Speaker 1: look in the news and we could find, like, here's
Speaker 1: a case where a guy what happened a year or
Speaker 1: two ago, someone like mistook a woman walking her dog
Speaker 1: for a deer, So we could go find instances that
Speaker 1: would substantiate or not. Or someone says I'm afraid of
Speaker 1: grizzlies and be like, Okay, let's let's dig into this, right, Um,
Speaker 1: is being afraid of grizzlies warranted or not. Now they
Speaker 1: might still be like, yeah, I'm still but I get
Speaker 1: it statistically it won't happen, but I'm still afraid of them.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to understand, Like the fear of public lands. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's public lands. I think it's
Speaker 1: just the fear of just being out, you know, in
Speaker 1: places where you know there's not anybody, in places where
Speaker 1: you don't feel defend table. And when it comes let's
Speaker 1: be clear here, when it comes to incidents of racism,
Speaker 1: rarely do you ever get the proof um, And really
Speaker 1: rarely do you need it. But in the case of
Speaker 1: violent like physical safety and violent crime. Yeah, So here's
Speaker 1: here's how we address it in our organization because it
Speaker 1: comes up pretty frequently for us, and we're not you
Speaker 1: know out here, Yeah, we're not you know out here,
Speaker 1: you know, um publicizing our stats and things like that. Um.
Speaker 1: And we don't need to, you know, for it to
Speaker 1: be valid. Right, If someone you know tells me that
Speaker 1: they are confronted by a group of people who want
Speaker 1: to know why you're there, you know, what, what what
Speaker 1: are you doing? How long are you going to be here?
Speaker 1: You know that's not really friendly and inviting, right, And
Speaker 1: so those are the kinds of things that you know
Speaker 1: are really tough to help people understand that just the
Speaker 1: unwelcoming peace can be enough of a of a barrier
Speaker 1: for people who you know are already coming in with
Speaker 1: a lot of again, a lot of historical narrative, a
Speaker 1: lot of things that you know, we've been, we've grown
Speaker 1: up knowing about. And so when you go out to
Speaker 1: a place and people are confronting your very reason for
Speaker 1: being in a place, um, that alone is problematic. And
Speaker 1: those are the kinds of barriers that we have to
Speaker 1: push through in our work. I've personally experienced it, and
Speaker 1: I've got tremendous nature swagger. I go out and I
Speaker 1: don't feel ever that I don't belong in public lands.
Speaker 1: But I've absolutely encountered people who asked me a few
Speaker 1: too many questions to prove that you know, I belong
Speaker 1: here and that I'm not a trespasser here. And I
Speaker 1: think it gets back to this idea that and it's
Speaker 1: I think this is kind of a tradition in a
Speaker 1: mindset that public lands belong to certain people, you know,
Speaker 1: and that even human humans as a whole, you know,
Speaker 1: don't belong in true wilderness. And I think there's just
Speaker 1: a bigger conversation we have to have, you know, around
Speaker 1: just this idea of humans belonging in nature and how
Speaker 1: we can exist with nature generally speaking. But I think
Speaker 1: that when it comes to communities that have not one
Speaker 1: felt historically and have known historically that they're not welcomed
Speaker 1: and and and that bad things have happened in the wood,
Speaker 1: and there are statistics about that. I mean, from I
Speaker 1: believe eighteen seventy seven through nineteen fifty, there were forty
Speaker 1: four hundred, um uh instances of people being lynch men, women, children,
Speaker 1: shot maimed. And these are all and this is just
Speaker 1: what we know, you know. So not everything gets reported, um.
Speaker 1: Not everything um, you know makes the front pages, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't make it true. Um. And So again this
Speaker 1: is why the work I do feel so relevant, because
Speaker 1: I want people to be able to come out in groups.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes people don't want to trapes out into the outdoors
Speaker 1: by themselves. They want to go out and groups of
Speaker 1: people to help them not only learn but importantly to
Speaker 1: feel safe and if people can continue to go out
Speaker 1: again and again, which they do. Um, you know, I
Speaker 1: very much see Like the work we do is like
Speaker 1: you know, almost training wheels if you will, you know,
Speaker 1: for people to get out and go, wow, Okay, I
Speaker 1: know where to go, I know how to get there,
Speaker 1: I know where to park. I know I'll be okay there. Um.
Speaker 1: And so there's there's there's a lot of work to
Speaker 1: do around welcoming, and then there's this other thing that
Speaker 1: happens though, and it's overwelcoming, like hey, how are you doing?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, you know it's yeah, yeah, yeah, It's
Speaker 1: like I walk me through and walk through what it
Speaker 1: feels like to be overwelcomed. Um. Just I mean just
Speaker 1: what I just said, you know, like where you where
Speaker 1: people are encroaching on your space, you know, and they're
Speaker 1: want to like you know, maybe I don't know. Like
Speaker 1: there's a great, a really great video that you should
Speaker 1: watch and your viewers could probably pull it up on
Speaker 1: um Funnier Die. It's Blair Underwood and he has a
Speaker 1: spoof called Black Hiker, and uh, basically he's experiencing like
Speaker 1: the whole range of what happens as a black man
Speaker 1: in the outdoors, right, everything from you know, the white
Speaker 1: woman jogger who suddenly turns around and runs away because
Speaker 1: she is afraid of pursuit um to the park ranger
Speaker 1: you know, who's basically been following you the whole time
Speaker 1: and then gets you at the trail head and says
Speaker 1: you need to sign the guest book. And he's like,
Speaker 1: why do I have to sign the guest book? Is
Speaker 1: there a rule that I have to sign the guest book?
Speaker 1: And then at the end, you know, they break down.
Speaker 1: They said, well, you know, we've just never seen a
Speaker 1: black hiker. Is my first time. I just we just
Speaker 1: need to know that you were here, you know. And
Speaker 1: so that's what I mean by overwelcoming. It's like I
Speaker 1: wanted to, like I I almost want to defend the
Speaker 1: over welcomer because like, at some point does it like
Speaker 1: is there room for intention? I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: like if you're aware, like I've heard that because of
Speaker 1: the things that have gone on in this country, I've
Speaker 1: heard that black people often feel uncomfortable and unwelcome in
Speaker 1: certain places. And I don't want to contribute to that ship.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to also not acknowledge another person's
Speaker 1: presence you can, lest it be misconstrued as hostility. So
Speaker 1: in their head is like, um, I want to be
Speaker 1: a good person. I want to remedy or wrong, but
Speaker 1: then they're a shitty actor. Yeah you know what I think.
Speaker 1: I think people put too much on it. Just just
Speaker 1: be with other people, Okay. But but I'm trying to
Speaker 1: be an apologist for the person who's like in their mind,
Speaker 1: they're like, I will not let this stand. I will
Speaker 1: not add to this. But when you encounter like the
Speaker 1: tenth of those people listen, it's a lot. You know,
Speaker 1: you're like, okay, all right, we're welcome. Okay, like let me,
Speaker 1: let me enjoy my campfire here, let me I want
Speaker 1: to explain. I want to explain like a thing that
Speaker 1: like a way that that would happen to somebody. Okay, Uh,
Speaker 1: As animals, okay, we we human animals, we sort of
Speaker 1: like become trained and what's what we see? Like right,
Speaker 1: we become we just like subliminally see things and we
Speaker 1: become trained. What we're what we know is around us.
Speaker 1: A thing we bring up in point, when I traveled
Speaker 1: to other countries like in America, I could see a
Speaker 1: person walking down street and I have a sense of what,
Speaker 1: Like when someone walks by my house, like that person
Speaker 1: is exercising. That person looks like they're racing home for
Speaker 1: some reason. That person looks like they're biking to the office.
Speaker 1: I don't deliberately deconstructed, but or whatever. It's like there's
Speaker 1: a guy with a bike, helmet and a suit on
Speaker 1: a shoulder back. I don't know. I never even get
Speaker 1: into it. I just know, like, but when I go
Speaker 1: to other countries and we're driving down the road and
Speaker 1: then some far away land, another continent, it bothers me
Speaker 1: that everyone walking down the street my cues and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like I don't know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: And we even laugh about our inability to tell, like
Speaker 1: what is up with people? You know, because all your
Speaker 1: ship come on, if you see me out here with
Speaker 1: hiking boots. Okay, let me finish my story. So if
Speaker 1: you if I spent my entire life, or let's just say,
Speaker 1: someone spent their entire life in an area where all
Speaker 1: they've ever seen walking down a trail in the woods
Speaker 1: would be like that dude's hunting, that woman's walking her dog.
Speaker 1: The woman with the suber out back and the like
Speaker 1: the nylon hat and wrap around shades and jogging is
Speaker 1: like an exercise fanatic, and you just build these things
Speaker 1: in your head without thinking about it. And then you
Speaker 1: see a person like you see a person of another
Speaker 1: you see a black person, person of another race, you've
Speaker 1: never seen there you would there's a there's a trigger
Speaker 1: where you're like, it doesn't fit into what I'm accustomed to,
Speaker 1: and I could see how it would, how it would
Speaker 1: bring about and someone like a need to make sense
Speaker 1: of it, and see, that's exactly why we really have
Speaker 1: to lift up different representation. This is again, this is
Speaker 1: a representation problem because if you don't see people who
Speaker 1: look like me in the glossy pages of the magazine
Speaker 1: or you know, you know, out in an empowered way,
Speaker 1: then yeah, you are going to be startled and perhaps
Speaker 1: disrupted in terms of your perception. I don't want to
Speaker 1: say startled, but disrupted where you're then because you can't
Speaker 1: you don't passively make sense of it, So then you're
Speaker 1: you put in this position of trying to actively make
Speaker 1: sense of it. Yeah, I'm laying it all out for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want making it uncomfortable. But I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to lay it out, you know, like how are our
Speaker 1: heads work? Yeah, and I just I just you know, again,
Speaker 1: I go back to you know, sometimes we overthink ship
Speaker 1: like like, yeah, I mean what I mean by that is,
Speaker 1: you know, can people just be you know and just
Speaker 1: say hey, you know or whatever whatever the norm of
Speaker 1: communication is for a given place and just leave it
Speaker 1: at that, you know, because the idea that somehow, you know,
Speaker 1: you or you know, the example that you gave, you know,
Speaker 1: has to be responsible for creating my experience is in
Speaker 1: its in and of itself disempowering. You know that I
Speaker 1: get what I do know it's not the job of
Speaker 1: that person, and I just feel I don't I don't
Speaker 1: take it as my job. Okay, I don't take it
Speaker 1: as my job. I'm not doing good at jobs. But
Speaker 1: it's like I take it as a moment where all
Speaker 1: the things that end your head that you don't calculate, okay,
Speaker 1: on the subject of just encountering an unexpected face, an
Speaker 1: unexpected body, all the things you don't take accounted for,
Speaker 1: and maybe it's like maybe it's an inherited racism that
Speaker 1: you can't get rid of. Whatever it is stuck in
Speaker 1: your head. When you see a person you don't know,
Speaker 1: you're forced to then be like, well, how would it be,
Speaker 1: how would it be that they're here? Not antagonistic, but
Speaker 1: it sticks, like it just sticks you and kind of like,
Speaker 1: what are the circumstances of the individual? Do they live here?
Speaker 1: That's interesting? Yeah? Yeah, And I'm telling you that kind
Speaker 1: of interest an intrigue. To be on the other side
Speaker 1: of that, it's not fun and it's not welcomed. I
Speaker 1: hate it too, like like I mean, not that I'm
Speaker 1: anywhere near that, but I don't Like I have been
Speaker 1: in situations in my life where you are aware of
Speaker 1: your presence and it sucks so to live like that
Speaker 1: all the time on public lands. Yeah, and that's why
Speaker 1: I mean again, this is why the work is so important,
Speaker 1: because we have to lift up and really work through
Speaker 1: this perception that has been fed to us that's simply
Speaker 1: not true of who belongs in the outdoors because I
Speaker 1: want The thing is, people ask me all the time,
Speaker 1: they're like, Okay, what, like what are you really working
Speaker 1: toward here? Right and saying and I'm working towards I
Speaker 1: get it because you told me, But like, how do
Speaker 1: you say that in an elevator, not an elevator, but like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, brief interaction. Well, it's it's been consistent and
Speaker 1: that is you know. I mean we've learned a lot
Speaker 1: of things over the years, but I think your question
Speaker 1: really gets to, you know, what the goal is here,
Speaker 1: you know, because when the work is done, there's not
Speaker 1: going to be some big You're done and there's the
Speaker 1: parade and main you know, down Main Street, and you
Speaker 1: know you dissolves a good kind of parade, mind you. Um,
Speaker 1: you know it's not you know, that big, big moment.
Speaker 1: It is really that quiet moment right in that moment
Speaker 1: when we look up when that guy that you just
Speaker 1: describe or that woman or whoever looks up and they're
Speaker 1: seeing people who look like me out recreating, enjoying the
Speaker 1: outdoors in proportion to their population, in their opportunity, and
Speaker 1: it's no big deal. And you don't go right, I
Speaker 1: mean like like like i'll give you, I'll give you
Speaker 1: a concrete example, since I know you like concrete examples,
Speaker 1: and um, I'm comfortable in the theoretical that's all right,
Speaker 1: double background, No, no, let's dance. So so I um,
Speaker 1: I think a lot about and you're old enough to
Speaker 1: remember this, to know this, lived through this trajectory to
Speaker 1: like were roughly the same age, right, yeah, So like
Speaker 1: when we were little. I rarely get to say that
Speaker 1: to people. So I'm going to say when we were little, yeah,
Speaker 1: because you were little kids at the same time, right,
Speaker 1: But usually it's like, what I was a little kid,
Speaker 1: you know, right, Um, But but when I was little,
Speaker 1: you were little, I'm sure you remember, Like you could
Speaker 1: smoke cigarettes everywhere. You could smoke them in the bank,
Speaker 1: you could smoke him on the train, you could smoke
Speaker 1: him in the restaurant, smoking or not smoking. You can smoke.
Speaker 1: You can smoke airplanes, maybe airplanes in the back of
Speaker 1: the airplane nowadays and they still so right, So, like
Speaker 1: you could smoke everywhere. It was not even a thing.
Speaker 1: It was it was something that no one questioned. You know,
Speaker 1: there were people who probably were individually bothered by it,
Speaker 1: but generally in the culture, it was just something that
Speaker 1: was accommodated. And then over time it began to be
Speaker 1: not okay in certain places, and then it got to
Speaker 1: the point where you really couldn't smoke anywhere. And now
Speaker 1: that's when I started to take pity on smokers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like out in the rain, you know, like you can't
Speaker 1: even smoke, you can't even smoke cigarettes in front, like
Speaker 1: within twenty ft of a building now, right, But think
Speaker 1: about where we started, you know, and think about how
Speaker 1: it took a whole generation to really shift how we
Speaker 1: think about tobacco, how we think about smoking, how we
Speaker 1: think about you know, the appropriateness of it, as well
Speaker 1: as greater awareness of the health consequences of that. That
Speaker 1: we're always there. But it took a lot of pulleys
Speaker 1: and levers and organizations and pr and you know a
Speaker 1: lot of different ways that folks work together to create
Speaker 1: that shift. And so that's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: I want to be on this show. That's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why, you know, one big reason why I
Speaker 1: do Outdoor AFRO is because we have to be a
Speaker 1: part of those pulleys and levers that tells a different
Speaker 1: narrative and gets us to that ordinary moment where black
Speaker 1: people again can be outside enjoying the outdoors, being strong,
Speaker 1: beautiful and free, not people who have to be rescued
Speaker 1: from the hood in order to have some kind of
Speaker 1: conversion experience in the outdoors. Because that's been that's been
Speaker 1: the predominant narrative, right, Like people I'll tell them, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I'll tell you so here's the narrative, right, it's
Speaker 1: um And even when I tell people what I do,
Speaker 1: sometimes their response is like the opposite of what I do.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like, oh, Ru, it's so great what
Speaker 1: you're doing for the poor black children that you're you're
Speaker 1: you're rescuing a weekend out hiking. Yeah, exactly. And then
Speaker 1: they're going to become conservationists after that, where they're gonna
Speaker 1: go home and you know, tell their families and then
Speaker 1: you know, the whole family's gonna and Michael, Okay, let's
Speaker 1: sit with that for a second and think about what
Speaker 1: really happens. What happens is that you have provided everything
Speaker 1: for this young person. You know worthy no matter what,
Speaker 1: but you provide everything, the gear, the equipment, the you know,
Speaker 1: the where to go, the how to do. You have
Speaker 1: isolated them from their family, um in delivering this experience.
Speaker 1: They're just they're out with peers, but they're not with
Speaker 1: their family. And then they go and they have some
Speaker 1: kind of experience that you will absolutely be memorable. And
Speaker 1: there's a lot of narrative also of people having like
Speaker 1: these breakdowns and breakthroughs or some kind of you know,
Speaker 1: evangelical experience in the in the outdoors, and then these
Speaker 1: kids you know, believe are believed to be changed, um,
Speaker 1: and then they'll have this this long lifelong value of
Speaker 1: protecting and loving the outdoors. And what I see get
Speaker 1: get actually gets played out is that these kids go
Speaker 1: home and their families may or may not be interested
Speaker 1: in what that experience was, and the kid has no
Speaker 1: way of getting back to that experience without you your organization. UM.
Speaker 1: And so there's no chance for that repeated experience. And
Speaker 1: you and I both know that it's not the one
Speaker 1: time experience. It's the lifelong experience that usually starts in
Speaker 1: your home. UM, and it happens again and again and again,
Speaker 1: where you get to learn lessons and you get to fail,
Speaker 1: and you get to be successful, and you get the
Speaker 1: whole range of experience. And that is what creates this
Speaker 1: passion that's love, this sense of the need to advocate
Speaker 1: and protect and be a part of that equation. But
Speaker 1: it's not the one time backpacking trip. And I think
Speaker 1: that we missed a really big opportunity. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: I think as long as we're looking at communities that
Speaker 1: as as needing to be saved or needing to be rescued,
Speaker 1: then we are tapping we're not tapping into the full
Speaker 1: breadth of communities uh empowered selves and that you know,
Speaker 1: there are people like me, you know, who are professionals,
Speaker 1: and all the people who are our leaders, of of
Speaker 1: of our organizations, they're all you know, busy working professionals
Speaker 1: of all kinds of backgrounds, and they you know, bring
Speaker 1: a ordinariness to the potential for who can be an
Speaker 1: expert in these experiences. And then we're in our communities
Speaker 1: doing these experiences and so we can do them over
Speaker 1: and over and over and over again and they not
Speaker 1: be episodic, you know, and a photo for the newsletter,
Speaker 1: you know. So that's um so again we're you know,
Speaker 1: just to kind of get back to your question, I'm
Speaker 1: so glad you asked about like the you know, the
Speaker 1: what do you do? We're really getting to the point
Speaker 1: where I want that person that feel like they can
Speaker 1: do they have to do anything, and that they can
Speaker 1: just be and they can respectfully enjoy the outdoors with
Speaker 1: whoever they happen to encounter in those experiences before you
Speaker 1: got here, Ys and I were talking about a thing
Speaker 1: another thing he had read that you were talking about
Speaker 1: the birding slash picnicking conundrum. You mentioned how to get
Speaker 1: people involved. You have two very different responses. If you
Speaker 1: have if you set up sort of a day of
Speaker 1: burning out at X location and like nobody calls you,
Speaker 1: nobody writes in like no participation, and then you say, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go out to the same location and have
Speaker 1: a picnic, and that all of a sudden everybody comes
Speaker 1: because I guess it's just more approachable and you just
Speaker 1: happen to have along with you you're spotting scope and
Speaker 1: some binoculars, and you achieve the same. Yeah, the intention
Speaker 1: is still met. But like whatever it was, like people
Speaker 1: just like we're like, it doesn't grab him to go birding. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I got to give you crops props
Speaker 1: for digging into the crates because that, like I that
Speaker 1: interview I did, like I don't know, like eight years
Speaker 1: ago probably, so yeah, like went deep into the crates. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean and it's still true. I Mean, it's an
Speaker 1: evergreen um issue where you know people um you kind
Speaker 1: of pay attention to people and ask them what they want,
Speaker 1: right and and people. I'll tell you, the thing that
Speaker 1: got a lot of people out initially with us is
Speaker 1: that people just wanted to meet other people. They just
Speaker 1: want to meet other people with similar interests. And so
Speaker 1: when you create you know, opportunities for people to connect
Speaker 1: with people, um, then there's all kinds of magic that
Speaker 1: can happen. And so it's absolutely true. I love, you know,
Speaker 1: watching wildlife. I love watching birds. I don't really consider
Speaker 1: myself a birder per se um, just because it kind
Speaker 1: of kind of gets us to a very narrow point
Speaker 1: in my mind. And I want to yeah, and I
Speaker 1: just you know, I mean I never cannot notice a bird,
Speaker 1: let's put it that way. Um. But my you know,
Speaker 1: tracking a meticulous life list or anything like that, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't say that I do. But I think it's
Speaker 1: really important for people to notice birds also because noticing
Speaker 1: birds and other wildlife really puts you in tune with
Speaker 1: the rhythms of of where you are and and and
Speaker 1: and the health of those places. And I you know,
Speaker 1: I love going to Lake Merritt In which is the
Speaker 1: oldest wildlife sanctuary in the country. UM. And it's also
Speaker 1: a fine place to have a cookout. And I grew
Speaker 1: up as a little girl going to places like Lake
Speaker 1: Marrin where there's wildlife all around us, but not necessarily
Speaker 1: the focus of why people go there, but you you
Speaker 1: appreciate it, right, and you know it's important. And there
Speaker 1: are people indeed who you know, bring the bread crumbs
Speaker 1: and you know, buy seed and and really engage with
Speaker 1: the wildlife there. But what I like to do is
Speaker 1: exactly that, like find a way that people are are
Speaker 1: open to getting outside and even like hiking, Like to
Speaker 1: say that, you know, you want people to go for
Speaker 1: a hike like that sets up a lot of expectations
Speaker 1: for people about skill, difficulty, hardship, you know. And so
Speaker 1: sometimes I'll say, let's go for a stroll, you know,
Speaker 1: like just even just shifting like how you talk about
Speaker 1: things opens the door wider for people to feel like, okay,
Speaker 1: I can do that. And so when I say okay,
Speaker 1: let's have you know, a cook out, Um, people show
Speaker 1: up for that because you know, people love food and
Speaker 1: people love people and they probably probably get it, and
Speaker 1: they get it. I can imagine how this will go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but if if I called it birding, people might think
Speaker 1: it's some kind of you know, a very finite educational
Speaker 1: you know, thing that's happening, or that they have to
Speaker 1: come in with a certain amount of knowledge or bring
Speaker 1: binoculars or whatever. And so by eliminating those things, you know,
Speaker 1: and getting people to just show up and I have
Speaker 1: the spotting scope, and I have the bird guides, and
Speaker 1: I have a chance to talk to people about the
Speaker 1: migration of these birds and and and also one of
Speaker 1: the things I love to do without door afro is
Speaker 1: to talk about just migration histories of black people, as
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, and how we can learn and and
Speaker 1: and really connect in with the migration of wildlife similar
Speaker 1: to the migration of people, and thinking about like, you know,
Speaker 1: what do you what what what do you need during
Speaker 1: you know, the times that you are are people have traveled,
Speaker 1: you know what do they need to be sustained? Um?
Speaker 1: What do they need to feel safe? And and and
Speaker 1: talk about also you know those same birds that were
Speaker 1: around you know, who are who are flying from Alaska
Speaker 1: along the Pacific Flyway. Um. So it's a really fun
Speaker 1: way to connect people into a conversation that's not just
Speaker 1: about this purely academic exercise, but one that is really
Speaker 1: about belonging and connecting and noticing. And I've been really
Speaker 1: thrilled to see the ways that people have really caught on.
Speaker 1: And and we've got people in our community who who
Speaker 1: who say they're birders. Um. We we have, um, you know,
Speaker 1: a really robust number of people who just you know,
Speaker 1: I've embraced wildlife observation and engagement. UM. But you've got
Speaker 1: to meet people where they are. Do you do you
Speaker 1: ever pitch people on it? Like do you ever encounter
Speaker 1: someone who's is no one interests man, no interest in nature?
Speaker 1: And do you didn't like cool? I respect that? Or
Speaker 1: do you then go like, oh but hear me out? Okay?
Speaker 1: So the conversation for people usually goes something like like
Speaker 1: I'll tell people what I do, um, and they'll say, wow,
Speaker 1: I don't like camping and I don't like hiking. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, all right, Well I mean do you,
Speaker 1: um you like to fish? Well yeah, yeah, you know
Speaker 1: me and my dad or mean, you know there's a story,
Speaker 1: you know, there's always going to be like a breakthrough
Speaker 1: story that you can connect with that relates to something
Speaker 1: that people are already doing. Another thing that people do
Speaker 1: it is tailgate. Like if you ask me, like tailgate
Speaker 1: is like day camp, Like tailgating at a game, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's day camp. I mean if you look at all
Speaker 1: the equipment that people buy, it's the same equipment that
Speaker 1: people buy when they're going camping, you know, complete sometimes
Speaker 1: with a tent, and like you know from the everything
Speaker 1: like everything is very you know, primitive in those environments
Speaker 1: with you know, rarely any running water. Yeah, I mean exactly. So,
Speaker 1: you know, so getting people to just see the things
Speaker 1: that they're already doing as outdoors because I think that
Speaker 1: the other problem we've had is that there has been
Speaker 1: this representation that there's the right way. There's like there
Speaker 1: are they're the best ways to be in the outdoors,
Speaker 1: and then there's ways and to be in the outdoors
Speaker 1: that don't really matter as much. And again, I look
Speaker 1: at how you know, especially busy working families, stressed communities,
Speaker 1: and the idea that someone can find leisure in an
Speaker 1: experience like dangling off the side of a mountain is ludicrous,
Speaker 1: you know. Like, instead, you know, people who have recreational
Speaker 1: time if they have the ability to take time off
Speaker 1: because a lot of people work through weekends or they
Speaker 1: work in the evening times. Um, what they want to
Speaker 1: do is probably do a cook out, you know, or
Speaker 1: maybe you know, connect with you know, some of their
Speaker 1: friends and go fishing and not do some of these
Speaker 1: really high adrenaline far away activities. And so that's been
Speaker 1: a really important part of our work. And when I
Speaker 1: did a poll early, we had just enough of a
Speaker 1: sample size asking people like what's in the way for you?
Speaker 1: Like how, you know, how can we help solve some
Speaker 1: of the ways of you know, getting you outdoors if
Speaker 1: you're not already and m geared equipment was huge, Like
Speaker 1: people just did they were lost about you know, what
Speaker 1: do I need or what do I already have that
Speaker 1: it can be you know, repurposed for outdoor experiences and
Speaker 1: you know, as you know, quite a lot you already
Speaker 1: have that you don't have to go and buy, um,
Speaker 1: where to go? What to do? UM fears and perceptions,
Speaker 1: fears of not only of course wildlife, but also of
Speaker 1: other people not feeling welcome. But the number one reason
Speaker 1: was time. Yeah, and and and here here's the thing.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that there's not enough time, but it was
Speaker 1: the perception that you needed a lot of time in
Speaker 1: order to get out and so if you can't go
Speaker 1: to Yosemite for a week, then yeah, it doesn't have right.
Speaker 1: So so that's what we set out to do, was
Speaker 1: to help create opportunities for people to get out in
Speaker 1: nature in chunks of time. And so we started doing
Speaker 1: like these like um, you know, these hiking happy hours,
Speaker 1: you know, where people might spend time like in a
Speaker 1: bar or you know something after work between you know,
Speaker 1: work and going home, but instead invite them to go
Speaker 1: out in nature with us UM creating those opportunities on
Speaker 1: a weekend that took more no more than two hours
Speaker 1: from start to finish, so that you still could go
Speaker 1: and participate in the soccer practice, or take care of grandma,
Speaker 1: go to church or whatever. UM. And so you know,
Speaker 1: we really are meeting people and especially busy working families
Speaker 1: UM in the point of their need UM in order
Speaker 1: to open the door to access. And then we can
Speaker 1: take people along a continuum to do more things, you know,
Speaker 1: things that take more time. But by then we've we've
Speaker 1: established trust and we've also established a way for people
Speaker 1: to feel more comfortable. Do you do you play UM
Speaker 1: in your head? Do you ever play a numbers game
Speaker 1: about UH representation in sort of like the the industry
Speaker 1: of the outdoors or the nonprofit like the non industry
Speaker 1: of the outdoors. Do you do you look and think like, man,
Speaker 1: it would be great if we could get to some
Speaker 1: level of parody. Or is it more you just interested
Speaker 1: individual experiences and you're not and you're not using like
Speaker 1: a metric of totality. Yeah, I think when you start
Speaker 1: playing the color by numbers game, it's dangerous. I think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't, you know, I don't or rather I don't
Speaker 1: play the color by numbers meaning like we've got to
Speaker 1: have X number or you know. Again, I go back
Speaker 1: to looking like America. Let's let's start there, you know,
Speaker 1: let's look at let's be proportionate at least right um,
Speaker 1: by gender, by race, but also really looking at where
Speaker 1: people live, Like, I don't expect to see a big
Speaker 1: population represented of of of people who look like me
Speaker 1: in places where we don't even live, right and so
Speaker 1: or where you know, when I look at, for example,
Speaker 1: places near Oakland, where there's like tons of beautiful hiking trails,
Speaker 1: when you go on those trails, it looks like the
Speaker 1: population of people who are there, right, Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: I expect, you know, where people live and it proves
Speaker 1: to be true that where people live and where is
Speaker 1: accessible to people they are. I think it's really um important, however,
Speaker 1: that the industries that are associated with the outdoors do
Speaker 1: a better job of representing that reality. Um. And I
Speaker 1: think that's what we don't see enough of. And that's
Speaker 1: when you know, again our our beginnings in working with
Speaker 1: the outdoor industry years ago, there are very few folks
Speaker 1: um who look like me who were on those show
Speaker 1: floors and really talking about representation in this way. And
Speaker 1: I'm really proud to say that they've come a long way. Um.
Speaker 1: But again I'm I'm looking for representation that actually feels
Speaker 1: realistic and represent that actually does represent the realities of
Speaker 1: what people do versus it being just a marketing strategy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that you have a representation. I think question
Speaker 1: or do I want to know? Like what does it
Speaker 1: make you feel? Because we noticed I don't know how
Speaker 1: many years ago, branded we love and use a lot,
Speaker 1: Mountain House, dehydrated food products familiar and there they're packaging
Speaker 1: has always had a group of people camping and sort
Speaker 1: of like historically it was the back that's what the
Speaker 1: painting that was like. Oh and then it went to
Speaker 1: a million years. It was like a backer packer, like
Speaker 1: in the Pacific Northwest, like a paint but they changed
Speaker 1: the packaging and all of a sudden, there's a picture
Speaker 1: of a very diverse looking group of people. I think
Speaker 1: there's I can't remember exactly, not two men, one woman, yeah,
Speaker 1: a version of Asian descent, yeah, the black person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the man's um black. Right. So when you see that,
Speaker 1: are you like, great, applause, good for you, or are
Speaker 1: you like, yeah, you know what I do? I look
Speaker 1: at the company's leadership. That's what I look at. That
Speaker 1: tells me the real story. Who's represented there? Now, who's
Speaker 1: on your board? This is on your board, Who's who's
Speaker 1: in the c suite? Because I believe that equity and
Speaker 1: representation and starts with design and not with optics. You know,
Speaker 1: just because you hired a model, you know, to be
Speaker 1: on the cover of your product doesn't mean that you
Speaker 1: really stand for And that's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: you know, we're really thoughtful about the partners that we
Speaker 1: have as part of our partnership portfolio, because I really
Speaker 1: want to know what you're doing when no one's looking,
Speaker 1: you know, And and I also want to make sure
Speaker 1: that we have a reciprocal relationship where we can learn
Speaker 1: from you and you can learn from us. You know,
Speaker 1: that's not just the you're gonna pick our brain for diversity,
Speaker 1: equity and inclusion, because we have so much more to
Speaker 1: offer than that, you know, we have, you know, just
Speaker 1: a network of just super brilliant people who come with
Speaker 1: their own expertise that continue to help you shape outdoor
Speaker 1: AFRO that is also you know, able to move into
Speaker 1: some of these organizations. Like the thing that's really made
Speaker 1: me so happy and inspired is to see so many
Speaker 1: people who become outdoor AFRO leaders get awakened to a
Speaker 1: whole industry of professional opportunity that they didn't even know existed,
Speaker 1: you know. And so and we're talking about not you know,
Speaker 1: entry level professionals. We're talking about mid career people who
Speaker 1: are able to pivot some good education and experience into
Speaker 1: these fields and and get good jobs and jobs that
Speaker 1: have influence. And so I really care a lot about
Speaker 1: you know, what's the holistic way that a company or
Speaker 1: a nonprofit organization is showing up. And I know that
Speaker 1: if you've got folks who are really at the helm
Speaker 1: of decision making, um then I'll have a lot more
Speaker 1: confidence in the authenticity of those efforts. Uh. I have
Speaker 1: a thing in my note. I don't want to read it.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what I have. A note that's not
Speaker 1: well articulated, says fear of cynicism around inclusion. And what
Speaker 1: I meant when I wrote that is that I don't
Speaker 1: like when I'm looking at our own company. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm aware in my head, like I'm aware that we've
Speaker 1: built the company that is equal male, like about female,
Speaker 1: about mail. It might be a little bit off, but
Speaker 1: it's like remarkably better than the industries that we're working, Okay,
Speaker 1: And so I look at that and like, I feel
Speaker 1: proud about that. But then I think, and you'd want
Speaker 1: to someone you're forced into a conversation about this about
Speaker 1: gender equity. Um, you're forced into a conversation. I don't
Speaker 1: like the feeling of needing to say, oh no, look,
Speaker 1: my co CEO is a woman, because they're like, I
Speaker 1: don't want to, I I run the I don't want
Speaker 1: to risk making her feel trivialized or making her feel
Speaker 1: like an emblem or that she's not qualified. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: it's like it winds up being really heard like I
Speaker 1: see it, I acknowledge it. I'm proud of it. But
Speaker 1: I'm afraid to like start applying numbers to all this
Speaker 1: ship lest people all of a sudden start looking around
Speaker 1: the room and being like why am I? Why am
Speaker 1: I here? Am I here? Because you run around counting
Speaker 1: all this ship up in your head and you're shooting
Speaker 1: for some goal and I'm like part of this like
Speaker 1: master plan, like that what I'm doing here because I
Speaker 1: thought I was here because I'm king and I on
Speaker 1: the flip side, how do you like tell me, like
Speaker 1: explain to me, like how I deal with that? How
Speaker 1: do they deal with that? Like? Well, I think the
Speaker 1: one of the things that challenges us right now, especially
Speaker 1: in this time, is that people I call thirsty four diversity.
Speaker 1: You know, like people just want it just to be
Speaker 1: because it's emblematic, you know, and and you can and
Speaker 1: you can tell like when it's not that they feel
Speaker 1: like they gotta they gotta, Like I don't want to
Speaker 1: say a gun to their head, but they're like they
Speaker 1: feel like enormous pressure to be like yeah here I
Speaker 1: am kicking yeah yeah, And you know, we're really thoughtful,
Speaker 1: like we can smell being a grant deliverable like a
Speaker 1: mile away, you know, because yeah, you know, people want
Speaker 1: the picture they want you know, they want us to
Speaker 1: explain grant deliverable. Well, for some not for profit organizations,
Speaker 1: you know there they have mandates through their funding streams
Speaker 1: to commit to diversity, equity and inclusion. Right, and that
Speaker 1: might mean that might mean that you need to make
Speaker 1: sure that your programs have representation, outreach, actual engagement. You
Speaker 1: know of certain demographics and there are folks who reach
Speaker 1: out to us routinely. You know, we want to partner
Speaker 1: with you and for us, you know, partnership means a
Speaker 1: few different things, right. Partner may mean like you've got
Speaker 1: something already baked in you just want to invite us
Speaker 1: to be a part of that thing that we didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily have a part in creating, but we're invited. And
Speaker 1: then the photo gets snapped and it looks like it's diverse. Right,
Speaker 1: But it wasn't really thought partnership involved. It was just
Speaker 1: kind of more of an optical exercise. Another version of
Speaker 1: partnership is when you know, to or more groups get
Speaker 1: together and think about something that makes sense for them
Speaker 1: all to participate in, and that feels a lot better.
Speaker 1: And then the third is just outright sponsorship, like we
Speaker 1: you know, we love what you're doing. We want to
Speaker 1: give you support to keep moving in the direction that
Speaker 1: you're moving in. And so I think, no, no optics.
Speaker 1: You know that people really want to support what you're
Speaker 1: doing and don't necessarily need to center themselves visually in
Speaker 1: in um in a way that validates its success. So
Speaker 1: I think to your question, though, I think it always
Speaker 1: boils down the relationships right and people even online, And
Speaker 1: I know you've experiences to like people know when you're
Speaker 1: authentic and when you're not. And so I really want
Speaker 1: to encourage us all to get in better relationship with
Speaker 1: each other. You know, I feel thankful like I'm on
Speaker 1: a board right now with the Wilderness Society, and we've
Speaker 1: been in relationship with each other for over a decade.
Speaker 1: And it started with them just seeing me, seeing my
Speaker 1: work and and using their platforms to share what I
Speaker 1: was already doing. They didn't co opt it. They were like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is what she's doing. We want to recognize her
Speaker 1: all the way to you know, helping us with some
Speaker 1: office space in DC. And then you know, now I'm
Speaker 1: on their governing council but it was like a long
Speaker 1: time for me to feel like and I get asked
Speaker 1: to join boards all the time. Yeah, you can tell
Speaker 1: that you're on the normal path to a board member,
Speaker 1: Yeah right now, not just someone there's a courtship, there is.
Speaker 1: And so I think that the same thing is has
Speaker 1: to be true in our workplaces where we really need
Speaker 1: to get different sectors in the same room together. And
Speaker 1: I'm one of the goals that I have for out
Speaker 1: draft row you know, in this you know conversation obviously
Speaker 1: is it's a little piece of this, but we have
Speaker 1: to get out of the the same conversations with the
Speaker 1: same people and mix things up and get into other
Speaker 1: sectors where they may be a little further along in
Speaker 1: some of these areas that we care about. But also
Speaker 1: it gives us some exposure to different ideas and and
Speaker 1: and really helps us to do a better job of
Speaker 1: network we weaving and be able to have access to
Speaker 1: other resources that we wouldn't otherwise be able to. It's
Speaker 1: like I feel at times, you know, that in celerity
Speaker 1: makes it feels like a pond that's over fished, right,
Speaker 1: It's just like it's it's it's people going back to
Speaker 1: the same people the same conversations. It's the same people
Speaker 1: on the same panel discussions, you know, And I'm just like,
Speaker 1: I'm done. I want to make new friends. I want
Speaker 1: to go to different places. I want to learn how
Speaker 1: other uh people in sectors are doing things and and
Speaker 1: take those new ideas back home and create, you know,
Speaker 1: a sense of real innovation. Do you feel like you
Speaker 1: get UH when you talk about the pond being over fished?
Speaker 1: Do you feel like you get a lot of calls
Speaker 1: that come from superficial internet searches. Yeah, definitely. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure that we probably pop up on
Speaker 1: the first page of you know, putting in just a
Speaker 1: few select keywords UM. And I think it takes people
Speaker 1: a while to get to know who we are in
Speaker 1: the nuanced way that we show up. That UM, you
Speaker 1: know informs the best partnerships, you know, and and and
Speaker 1: good partnerships they they just have for us. They've taken time.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of people right now who are
Speaker 1: coming on board, you know. And I'm not deducting points
Speaker 1: for timing, you know, by any means, because I think,
Speaker 1: you know, we got to start someplace. But I do
Speaker 1: want people to know that we're not interested in just
Speaker 1: getting a check, you know, we're not interested in you know,
Speaker 1: being a social media mentioned or putting them on our
Speaker 1: social media. They were really looking for people who we
Speaker 1: can go out for a beer with and talk about
Speaker 1: stuff and really get to know and and really innovate
Speaker 1: and think about, you know, new ways of addressing old problems.
Speaker 1: And and again it really comes down to relationships. And
Speaker 1: I always say that change only happen at the speed
Speaker 1: of relationships, you know, So all of all the folks
Speaker 1: who are out here trying to you know, rush kids
Speaker 1: and communities to the altar of conservation, you know, in
Speaker 1: a in a single grant year or a single program,
Speaker 1: are just not not going to get it right. UM.
Speaker 1: And I think we've got to really really respect that
Speaker 1: we're you know, we're people connecting to people, people connecting
Speaker 1: with places. And the more we understand about people and places, UM,
Speaker 1: and take the time to really get to know those places,
Speaker 1: then we'll land in a really solid place where we
Speaker 1: can build from there. Room map, How can people find
Speaker 1: you outdoor afro across all the platforms, UM, I love
Speaker 1: to hear from people, love to hear how we can
Speaker 1: be in relationship with each other I'm pretty confident. Um,
Speaker 1: a lot of people be real annoyed that they had
Speaker 1: to listen to us to have a difficult conversation. They
Speaker 1: don't want that. But then a lot of people will,
Speaker 1: uh hopefully a lot of people reach out to you. Well,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people are gonna gonna want
Speaker 1: to know what they can do more than just reaching out.
Speaker 1: And what would you say if I was just like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'd be really interested in doing something with
Speaker 1: outdoor Afro. Yeah. I think you know, we're in a
Speaker 1: really interesting time in our country right now where people
Speaker 1: are they're wanting to find like where the pathways, the lanes,
Speaker 1: um that feel relevant to them. Um. You know, so
Speaker 1: obviously people in the outdoor spaces you know, are coming
Speaker 1: to us versus from other industries. Um. But I just
Speaker 1: would invite people to start with checking us out and
Speaker 1: and really getting to know Outdoor Afro online before coming
Speaker 1: to us with this thing that they already have baked
Speaker 1: in that they want us to do with them. Um.
Speaker 1: I think the people who take the time to get
Speaker 1: to know because we're not going anywhere, you know, there's
Speaker 1: no like you know, deadline here for people to connect
Speaker 1: with us. So take the time for this all goes
Speaker 1: I got to get in before this goes away, right
Speaker 1: all right, I mean we're not going anywhere. We're solid.
Speaker 1: We've been around for ten years. That's an interesting point,
Speaker 1: you know. And uh and you know, for me, it's
Speaker 1: been really important to build a professional organization that is
Speaker 1: responsive to people who want to connect with us. We've
Speaker 1: got a great team of folks who we can connect
Speaker 1: them with. So if it's a program, you know, I've
Speaker 1: got a great program director who could you get into
Speaker 1: conversation with people and find out if there's something of
Speaker 1: mutual benefit there. Um, people can always donate to us.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're not for profit organization and we need
Speaker 1: resources to maintain that high level of professional delivery that
Speaker 1: we do for everyone. And then we also invite people
Speaker 1: to get outside with us. You know. I always like
Speaker 1: to say that you don't have to have an AFRO
Speaker 1: to be a part of out dur Afro. So if
Speaker 1: you believe it felt like there's going to be a
Speaker 1: stupid question, and I've made that a goal of my
Speaker 1: life to you know, not think that anymore and just
Speaker 1: go ahead and ask. But that was I was going
Speaker 1: to ask, like do you have to have an AFRO
Speaker 1: to join. No, no, I mean we we really welcome
Speaker 1: everybody who believes in what we're doing. Right, So if
Speaker 1: you believe in what we're doing and you want to
Speaker 1: be a part of that, you know, we welcome it.
Speaker 1: So if you were having an event like me and
Speaker 1: Jana showed up, you should you have you you'd have
Speaker 1: a ball and we want to get kicked out. Oh god, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no no. I mean you know, here's the thing
Speaker 1: about Outdoor AFRO that's been great, you know, and that
Speaker 1: is specificity has been universal. We could have been called
Speaker 1: people of color and the outdoors and that's like everybody
Speaker 1: and nobody, and sometimes sometimes in our reach to try
Speaker 1: and include everybody and everything, we we can get lost
Speaker 1: in that. And I because we have been so focused
Speaker 1: in our network, outreach and engagement that people can see
Speaker 1: exactly where we are on a map in their relationship,
Speaker 1: you know, either close or further away from it, but
Speaker 1: they know, you know, there's a definite dot on the map.
Speaker 1: And that kind of specificity I have found has made
Speaker 1: our message feel more accessible and universal to more people.
Speaker 1: And because people get that, people sometimes choose to come
Speaker 1: out with us and sometimes they say, you know what,
Speaker 1: you guys need to have some space to work some
Speaker 1: stuff out, and I don't have to center myself in
Speaker 1: those spaces. But as far as like the welcoming piece,
Speaker 1: you know, when we have our our annual training, you
Speaker 1: know that obviously comes up. You know, people want to know, um,
Speaker 1: you know, if if you know they need to be
Speaker 1: a certain way or and and we always say that
Speaker 1: everyone is welcome, and um, you know, we have multiracial
Speaker 1: families and all kinds of folks you know, who bring
Speaker 1: you know, all kinds of identities and geographies and economic classes.
Speaker 1: So we're we're really happy to be an open door
Speaker 1: for people who are behind what we're doing. Well, thank
Speaker 1: you for joining us, Thank you for having me. I
Speaker 1: hope some people come find you. Yeah, I'm sure, and
Speaker 1: I hope some people come find you. You're gonna You're
Speaker 1: gonna fish tomorrow. I'm looking forward to that. Okay, We're
Speaker 1: gonna eat fish tonight. I'm loving that idea. What kind
Speaker 1: of fish do you want to know? What am I missing?
Speaker 1: Well from? From from my trip for dost Bolt season
Speaker 1: two Dose Boats, I brought home a bunch of lake
Speaker 1: trout flats. Holy ship. That was good Man mostly smoking them.
Speaker 1: I was I wasn't gonna smoke them, but then we
Speaker 1: fell in love with eating them grilled. I got one
Speaker 1: left and then I put some turkey wild turkey breast
Speaker 1: and the brine. And then when I have people over
Speaker 1: hours cooking ms because I don't have to just put
Speaker 1: them in the oven and forget about them. Nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's nice, but it's just lazy. Now it works.
Speaker 1: And I brought you guys something to Yeah. I brought
Speaker 1: you some cherry jam that I made last month. So
Speaker 1: so if you have maybe some ice cream or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my kids will be into it. Okay, I will see
Speaker 1: you later. You will, Broughty will see you tomorrow. Thank
Speaker 1: you to it. Thank you bye,