I’m biracial, and one of the reasons I was so excited to interview you is because you're biracial too. What was that experience like for you growing up as a biracial kid in America. You spoke about your parents taking you in the outdoors, and do the two correlate?
Yeah, I mean, pretty directly. My mom, who is white, is the one responsible for getting me into hiking. We used to go to Mount Lassen a lot when I was a kid. Or go up to the Point Reyes seashore. I grew up riding horses. We had a ranch, and I rode in little rodeo events. We did a lot of horse camping. Sometimes when I start telling stories from my childhood, my friends will be like, "Wait! What?”
My dad is Black, and he's always been very supportive, whatever I want to do, even if it's not what he is interested in, but he was never outdoorsy. And so I literally had the duality, I would go to one home with my dad, which was in this manicured little suburb, in this tiny tract home and then on the weekends, I'd go to my mom's, which was like, you know, a ranch—we had pigs and chickens. So, it was as opposite as you could imagine.
You recently did an Instagram video series called Tips for New Outdoors People, and it felt fun and approachable. What was the inspiration behind those videos, and what did you hope they would achieve?
It was directly inspired by the Black Hikers Week hashtag that was created by Corina Newsome, who's not related to me—you know... last name... slavery. The amount of times I have to tell people, "No, I'm not related to the governor [of California, Gavin Newsom], and I need you to think for like three seconds why…” But, yeah, she's a Black scientist and outdoors person, and she had teamed up with a couple of other organizations, and they created this hashtag, #blackhikersweek in addition to #blackbirdersweek, which was a direct response to Christian Cooper, the Black birder in Central Park. I don't want to put words in their mouth, but I saw it as a way to take something that these people were experts in, being Black and being outside, and saying, "Hey, more of us should get to do this and let's showcase it, so we increase the visibility." And I was like, oh, well, I can do that. Like, I'm a nerd, who's obsessed over the ten essentials (how to stay safe outside) so I can do that.
What it really did, that I was super grateful for, was connect me to everyday people who are outside—just like, Black women who do this all the time. I used to follow so many of those "mountain girl" accounts, which no shade to them, truly, cause everyone's just making a living, but they're just traditionally beautiful, white, blonde, and very thin. The enableism in the outdoor community is a big thing, one in which I'm not qualified to talk about, but it's something that needs to be addressed. And I was looking at my social media feed as someone who thinks of myself as pretty aware of that stuff, and it was just like, man, all my outdoor inspiration looks one way, and they're getting these huge sponsorships and endorsements and good for them, but I would love to see a black woman get a huge REI sponsorship. A huge Patagonia sponsorship. You know, I'd love to see her just make six figures selling us leggings on the side of an alpine lake.
You have a podcast called Yo! Is This Racist? Can you tell us a little more about it, and do you use it to discuss systemic racism in the outdoors?
I do a little. The Venn diagram of our listeners and the people who kind of engage with me online about the "outdoor" stuff isn't that large I've learned. I try not to soapbox on the podcast to a bunch of city dwellers who just aren't interested in going outside. Which is fine; not everyone has to love trees.
But yeah, the show was started by my friend, Andrew Ti, from a tumbler account where he just took voicemails from people about things that have happened to them or things that they've said, or our personal favorite, somebody narcing out one of their friends or their coworkers, where they're just like, "I can't tell you who, but here's some nonsense that happened..." So the two of us together, we invite a special guest, usually a comedian, to help us parse these things together. And you know, we're not experts, no one went to college for racism, but the podcast is intended for entertainment even though the topics can be heavy.