The outdoors should be a welcoming place for everyone. Unfortunately, this often proves not to be the case. An individual’s outdoor experiences are colored by circumstances that are often out of their control. If we want to better understand how other experience the outdoors, and more importantly how to make the outdoors more welcoming, it’s important to listen to their voices. Over the past several years, I’ve made an effort to seek outdoor books by authors of different backgrounds. This has included writers who were the homeless at the time of their adventures, members of the LGBTQ+ community, indigenous authors, black authors, and members of other minority groups.
I wanted to celebrate Black History Month in a way that is relevant and meaningful to the work done by the CWC. Ultimately, I decided that one of the best ways that I could do that was to highlight outdoor books by black authors. – Mike
African Americans are underrepresented in the outdoor industry as a whole. The lack of diversity in the outdoor industry is an acknowledged problem both in terms of employment and in how the outdoor industry portrays itself and the users of its products/experiences. The legacy of African Americans in the outdoors is complicated to say the least and I am wholly unqualified to sort it out. I highly recommended reading Latria Graham’s essay “We’re Here. You Just Don’t See Us.” which was originally published in Outside Magazine in 2018. In this essay, Graham explores how a lack of access, past laws, discrimination, and personal experiences contribute to a perception that black people do not participate in outdoor activities.
For a deeper dive into this particular subject, I recommend the following trio of books: Black Faces, White Spaces by Carolyn Finney; Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape by Lauret Savoy; and The Adventure Gap: Changing the Face of the Outdoors by James Edward Mills.
In Black Faces, White Spaces (2014), Carolyn Finney draws on a range of resources including historical documents, film, literature, and pop culture to explore the ways, both real and perceived, in which nature and the environment have been racialized. In addition, she highlights the work of individuals who are working to change perceptions and open up participation.
Lauret Savoy is an author of mixed African American, European, and indigenous heritage. In Trace (2015), she explores the intersections of the different parts of her heritage while tracking it across the American landscape. In addition to exploring here personal lineage, the book explores the larger narratives of culture, memory, history, and race.
In The Adventure Gap (2014), journalist James Edward Mills uses an accounting of the first all African American summit attempt of Denali (the highest peak in North America) as the backdrop for the larger exploration of why more people of color don’t participate in outdoor recreation.
The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature (2016) by J. Drew Latham is one of my favorite books of the last decade – after reading it, I donated it to a silent auction to support the Michigan Alliance for Environmental and Outdoor Education (MAEOE). I swiftly regretted the decision to part with it. When my former copy of the book reappeared at the same auction the following year, I took the opportunity to reacquire it. The Home Place explores some of the same themes as those explored by Lauret Savoy in Trace but approaches them on a much more intimate scale. The Lanham’s family farm in rural South Carolina, serves as the backdrop to his exploration of nature, landscape, history, and race.
Way Out There: Adventures of a Wilderness Trekker (2017) is the memoir of J. Robert Harris. In 1966, Harris, then aged 22, decided to drive his Volkswagen Beetle solo from his home in New York to Circle, Alaska. Prior to the construction of the Dalton Highway to service the North Slope oilfields in 1968, this was the furthest north point reachable by road in the United States. Although his trips these days are more likely to involve backpacking than a VW Bug, Harris has never stopped exploring. Way Out There details just a few of his many adventures.
Thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail is typically not done by those with little to no backpacking experience. It is also not typically done by people of color – 94-96% of AT thru-hikers identify as white. Hence the title of Derick Lugo’s hiking memoir The Unlikely Thru-hiker: An Appalachian Trail Journey (2019). The book details Lugo’s 2012 hike from trying to explain his plan to friends through submitting Katahdin. I’ve read a number of thru-hiking memoirs, and this my favorite.
The final book on this list is one I haven’t read yet. Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black man in the Natural World by Christian Cooper was published in June 2023. Christian Cooper does not fit the stereotype of a birder; a queer black resident of New York City, he became famous after sharing a video of a 2020 incident in Central Park during which a white woman called 911 and falsely accused him of threatening her. This book doesn’t just focus on that incident but details the journey that led him to that point as well as where life has taken him since that day.
I hope you seek out these books and other like them. Happy reading!
