Messy, Beautiful, Camping.
written by Yilan Shen
I have a confession to make. I am not great at camping.
I’m always rolling into the campgrounds late and in the dark, eating fruits and nuts rather than actually cooking, and sometimes I’ll sleep in the car rather than in the tent. I’m always borrowing somebody else’s headlamp even though I have a whole basket full of them. I am not a model of great camping skills. Sometimes, I’m not even sure one can call what I do camping, like the time I slept on a picnic table with my dogs in Yosemite. One thing I can say is I do whatever it takes to simplify and go camping. I prefer to camp in some sloppy and not so polished manners rather than not camp at all.
Maybe camping is a sloppy venture for me because I had no context for it in my early life. Growing up in China in the 80’s, camping was not an activity of leisure or an activity at all. It wasn’t until I was a teenager after we emigrated to Kansas that I camped for the first time. We just hung out around a fire on a ranch that belonged to our friend’s uncle. I loved the simplicity of it - being with my favorite friends under the stars around a fire.
As I got older and moved to Colorado, I camped more and stuck to my simplicity approach. I slept a lot in my car with my dogs as a single woman. Why would I set up a tent when I can just curl up with my fluffy buddies in the back of my SUV. I am that person who has set off the car alarm in the middle of the night on more than one occasion.
More recently, I traveled and camped more with my partner who can’t fit and doesn’t want to fit on a picnic table with me. We’ve stayed in lodges, rented camping vans in Scotland and in the US, backpacked through the Rocky Mountains, and got a travel trailer so our cat can travel the PNW with us.
While I have more sophisticated equipment for camping and have a partner to share the load with now, one thing still holds true. I am always glad I went camping. I love sleeping outside, drinking out of mountain streams, and making memories with friends. That time on a picnic table in Yosemite, I saw dozens of shooting stars unexpectedly. I later learned I fortuitously was out there during the Perseiid meteor shower.
When I look back at my own relationship to camping, I feel lots of gratitude. I’m thankful I had childhood friends who introduced me to it and many opportunities that made it easy for me to camp. Not everyone has the same opportunities. According to data from the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, and Fish and Wildlife Service, people of color are about 40% of the US population, but white people make up 70% of those visiting national forests, national wildlife refuges, and national parks with black people being the most underrepresented group. When I dream of a more diverse outdoors,
I dream of one where those numbers reflect the diversity of our communities.
Wild Diversity works to make a more diverse outdoors dream into reality everyday. From our professional guide training to provide the highest quality experience for all our participants to connecting youth to the great outdoors every summer, we spend all our energy curating a more inclusive experience and making our outdoors safe and inviting to all. For a lot of our folks, we are supporting them to have their first camping experience ever. At the crux of making this dream a reality is the willingness to share, to share the outdoors and to share the resources to connect our BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities to these healing experiences. This end of year, please share your stories and dreams. And help us realize these dreams for the future by fundraising with us and donating to our programs.
