Diversity in the Outdoors - Alex Galeana's story
Written by board member Alex Galeana
My friends and I had been scrambling all day near a small town in the Rockies. As dusk fell, we wandered into a local restaurant, covered in sweat and dirt, telling stories about the day’s triumphs and near misses. The bartender seemed chatty with the rest of my group, but his eyes seemed to slide away whenever I tried to get a beer. When I finally waved him down, he completely ignored me.
As we left town, my friends gushed about how charming the place was. It was almost like they’d experienced a totally different place than I had. Sore, satisfied, and exhausted from the day, my body was full of positive endorphins, but a part of me was also relieved to be heading back to the city—where people wouldn’t give me the kind of look that says, “You don’t belong here.”
As a Latino outdoors enthusiast, across outdoor spaces throughout the West, experiences like this are just a part of my reality. And while they’re usually only small points of discomfort on my adventures, these instances add up. Once, as I stood alone outside a bar in a rural mountain town getting some air, a police officer came up to me and began asking me pointed questions: “What are you doing in town? What are your plans?” Of course, there had been no questions when I’d been walking around with some of my other mountain friends.
Photo courtesy of Alex Galeana
I am not alone in the conflict between my love for the outdoors and feeling out of place in the outdoor recreation community. There are many other climbers, runners, and outdoor enthusiasts of color who also feel like the outdoor community wasn’t designed for them.
The US has a history of discrimination against people of color in outdoor spaces that comes much closer to the present than we might think. In fact, it was less than sixty years ago that the Civil Right Act of 1964 made it law for Black Americans to have full access to public lands such as national parks, which had previously often been segregated.
In the present day, the legacy of discrimination lingers in a distinct lack of diversity and inclusion. According to the National Health Foundation, which aggregated data from U.S. organizations such as the Forest Service and National Park Service, while people of color comprise almost 40% of the U.S. population, they make up only 30% of visitors to national public lands. The statistics become more dismal when you zero in on specific groups. Researchers compiled National Parks Service data in 2018 and found that while Black people make up 13% of the U.S. population, less than 2% of visitors to national parks are Black. Asian (5% of the population) and Latino (19% of the population) visitors both come in at less than 5% of park visitations.
My own personal journey in the outdoors has mirrored these data points. My experience with outdoor recreation started when I was eight, when I’d just immigrated to the United States and joined the Boy Scouts. Even at that age, I recognized it as the most direct way I could connect to this country and feel American. Language and cultural barriers meant that for many years I felt alienated from other kids at school and in public. Having access to the outdoors gave me a safer place where dealing with those emotions was more manageable.
Outdoor recreation became even more important to me after I graduated high school. It was then that my parents told me that I was undocumented. My family had left Mexico when I was eight in a rush to escape the dangerous living conditions we’d experienced there. Just as I had when I was a child, I turned to the outdoors in order to process my emotions. Hiking and camping in unfamiliar forests and peaks gave me space to take care of my body and feel a grounding connection to the wilderness—safe and peaceful in a way human society could never be, but at the same time savage, unpredictable, and existentially spicy.
Even after I worked through that period of emotional upheaval, the outdoors has become an important part of my life for fun, recreation, and connection. By now, I’ve participated in many amazing couloir climbs, alpine scrambles, and trail runs. However, as I got deeper into outdoor recreation communities, it hit harder how few people in these spaces looked like me.
Photo by Michael Black from the top of Cable Line, one of Alex Galeana’s favorite Issaquah Alps jaunts
While I’ve made great friends in the climbing and trail running communities, I’ve always felt like an outsider—as if these communities weren’t designed for people like me. I’ve had to fight against the feeling of isolation that comes from being the only person who looks like me on the trail. And as much as I love my mountain friends and training partners, they can’t relate to many of the issues my community is facing.
Take a look at Texas District Court’s pending ruling on DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), slated for this year or the next. As a result of the ongoing case, thousands of young immigrant adults, including myself and many of my friends and family, may lose their ability to live and work in the United States. Many in the mountaineering community, busy planning their next career moves, renovating a van to move into, or scheming how to pull off a month-long trip to Patagonia, will never know what it’s like to worry that their entire life plan might become illegal in an instant.
When you consider that it is the norm to be the odd one out, to know there are things people probably don’t want to talk about, to get confused or hostile looks on the trail or in nearby communities—it doesn’t seem surprising that people of color aren’t visiting the wilderness as much as white people are.
That’s why it’s critical that we in the outdoor recreation community work together to create a more inclusive atmosphere that is actually reflective of the people who live in our country. Not only must public lands be available and made easily accessible to marginalized communities, but people of color must be offered more opportunities to learn about what’s out there—and a safe and welcoming atmosphere when we join in.
There are many direct ways to accomplish this. For one, conservation organizations can spearhead educational programs that teach BIPOC youth about our public lands and bring them to experience the wonder of these spaces through recreational activities like hiking, climbing, biking, etc. It is especially critical to center these opportunities around historically marginalized BIPOC youth from communities that have a difficult time accessing our public lands, whether because of financial hardship, lack of free time, or lack of awareness about the opportunities.
Another solution is for conservation organizations to hire BIPOC staff, not just at the program levels, but for decision-making and leadership positions. Doing this will ensure that any educational and advocacy programs focused on conservation efforts are designed through a lens that prioritizes the lived experience of people of color in Washington.
This is a concept that is very popular in the immigrant rights movement, a cause I’ve worked for at my day job for many years. When seeking to fill positions of leadership in this space, we find it a good practice to hire people who have been the most directly impacted by the issues we’re trying to solve. In turn, leaders who have lived with the problem of a lack of diversity in outdoor spaces and felt its impact on their own families and communities are more likely to make political decisions that prioritize the needs and values of others who are affected.
Although these are issues that will take a long time for the outdoor community to tackle, I have hope that we’re headed in the right direction. Our community in the Issaquah Alps is a great example of this. The Issaquah Alps Trails Club (IATC), an organization I sit on the board of, has made it an organizational priority in our five year strategic plan to build an inclusive outdoors with a diverse community. This can be seen in the organization’s recent recruitment efforts, which have focused on finding diverse board members and volunteers to join our organization. Issaquah’s largest trail running club, the Issaquah Alps Trail Running Club, has implemented a similar practice. A high number of the club’s members are trail runners of color - which is a result of the welcoming vibe and equity-driven outreach efforts of the club’s leadership.
The outdoor recreation community has had an incredible impact on my life. In the mountains, I have found refuge, friendship, and adventure, and ultimately, being in the outdoors helped me find my place in a country I’m now happy to call home. My hope is that this community will put in the work it takes to give more people who look like me and come from similar backgrounds the best opportunity possible to discover these wonders for themselves.
Further Reading:
Gratuitous photo of ED Nicole Assumpcao’s two dogs - Alex says they are his favorite thing on Strava