Our Story is Your Story: Asnoldo

We joined Asnoldo, a participant in some of our events, out at a park in White Salmon to talk about his relationship to the outdoors. He provides wonderful insight about what it means to “harvest joy,” tools that he uses to conquer his fears, bird songs, and the magic of taking a walk with someone you love.

How would you describe your relationship to the outdoors?

What I've said in the past, and it still rings true, is that the relationship I have with the outdoors started with my grandma–she introduced me to walking around the neighborhood, as some of my earliest memories. We would Walk along the irrigation ditches in Idaho and she would point out where wild asparagus was growing, and assess if we would harvest now or come back. Like, That's not ready, or like, let's take some of this. And she would place a rock as a memory spot and to keep the grass from growing too close, so we could just come back, find our rocks, and gather our asparagus. So that relationship with taking a walk has just stayed with me–where it feels like everything's a scavenger hunt. On the Willamette Paddling Trip that I went on with Wild Diversity, we were hanging out on the second day, and I really wanted to go across the river and look in this cave. In the back of my head, I'm also always looking for clay when I'm on a river. So I went over there. The cave wasn't as impressive as I thought it'd be but it was cool, and the ground looked clayish. So I took it back. Sure enough, it was clay. And that felt like that was part of what we were supposed to do on the water was to go find clay. And so, walking and finding asparagus, to creating a scavenger hunt for my youth groups is just a reminder that everywhere you go, everything is meant for us to interact with it. Trees and grass, all that fun stuff. So yeah, my introduction was through that – through walking in Idaho. It was a lot of walking. Aberdeen, where my grandma lived and where we grew up, was a small town – probably like a quarter of the size of this place [White Salmon], real small. So walking has been a fun way to get around.

Do you have any memories of walking with other people?

My sister. There were a few times that she and I would walk to and from events, as young kids. Which was kind of a big thing, but I trusted her in that parental role. She's three years older and real good at caring for me. So we just did a lot of our own walking, that felt pretty daunting and intimidating then, but it was really just like getting home on back roads, back to our community. We went on some adventures that fell pretty big. To and from the school bus always felt like a mission. 
And then, in my teens, my early 20s, all through my life, anytime I'm with all of my family – at least back when my grandma lived – we would go on walks. We haven’t really done that since she passed in 2013. It was always like my uncle would start it, after dinner he would say, We're going for a walk. We would be in that same small town, Aberdeen. I loved it because we weren’t leaving at a set time, or coming back at a set time, and we weren’t really defining what the walk was, other than going for a walk. If you were cool you kind of got away from it and went on your own walk with the cousins. But for the longest time I walked with all my aunts and uncles, and even now, if we were to do it again, I would probably rather walk with them. And I've been intentional about that ever since finishing my Master's Program in Environmental Education, whenever I'm with my uncles back in Idaho – I feel like we've just been divorced from this activity since my grandma's passing – that I've been verbally just saying like, Who's going to be the walk leader? Or, aren’t we supposed to go for a walk, like what's up with that? Or, I mean I'm going for a walk, and you can come with me, and trying to get my younger cousins who are like high school age to participate. So far it's been like a small handful of us. When just one aunt comes over, they're all about it, and we'll get going. But the kids don't see it, and I remember that feeling too when it was just like, What's the point? And my thought is that there is no “point.” We're just moving together

I really like the idea that everything is meant to be interacted with. Do you think that orientation toward the world has been sustained throughout your life? Or you think there have been times when maybe you weren't paying as much attention?

Absolutely. There was definitely a death and a rebirth of this idea – of interacting with things. I remember like, Oh it's a dead bird don't touch it right? Or the belief that leaves or feathers on the ground are dirty. There's just like this whole “adulting” where all of a sudden, you didn't want to get wet. And I see it with some of the young men that I take down to the river now [for work] where they're like, I got sand in my shoes, or I gotta get all the sand off of my feet first. I'm trying to encourage a shift, like, So if we walk back now, we can go towards this other river where the White Salmon meets the Big River, also known as the Columbia Gorge. And where they meet, it’s really sandy. And if we walk back towards the car we can just dip our feet in the White Salmon, where its less sandy and have like a final dry off. But they still have some resistance or this energy that, I want to try to stay as clean as I can. Or I don't want to get in the water. I don't want to get grimy or dirty. It’s a thing that I hear from alot of youth around water everywhere, from Colorado to here. And there is historical truth to that, like pollutants in the water and racial stigma around cleanliness. But I feel like, where we're at, the water is pretty clean. So yeah, there was definitely a time when I thought feathers were fun, as a kid. Then they were dirty. And now, again with that master's program in the Tetons, we did a museum prep dissection of a bird in one class, like, prep and stuff them for learning. So I got back to now whenever I see a feather, I want to at least identify it like Oh, it's like a primary flight feather, or like a Duff, or one of the down feathers, the body feather. So it's just fun to see that and kind of have a little more relationship with it.

Do you think that that Master’s Program, specifically, reignited your relationship with the outdoors? 

Yeah, I think I wrote a little piece where I was like, This is a place where I feel reborn into nature anew. Going into TSS [Teton Science Schools] and learning to teach these observation skills, learning them first, it's just part of my life now.

Do you feel like you can palpably feel your identity when you’re in the outdoors?

Oh I definitely am constantly aware of my identity in the outdoors. Even before I went to the Tetons, my mom moved onto the reservation near where we grew up, and spending time there and reconnecting with relatives – there's just such a familiarity with appreciating a circular type of life. Because my mom is a teacher and educator, whenever she and I would have coffee on Sunday mornings and hang out, we would talk about the structure of – I don't know what we called it then, I think we just call it white society and just like white people – and they're linear right? And like indigenous ways are circular and there are just seasons to things, you know? So there isn't so much the metric of you've missed something or you're early to something, but you're just kind of out of sync, or you're on, with what's going on around you. And so, as I learned about nature, I just knew the Latin names were just the Latin names for something that has had a name long before the scientific name. And it has had a name that was given to it by people that have lived here for a very long time. 
And beyond that, just to go a little deeper, for my own thought exercise, I like to think in poetry: I'm like, Well what would you call yourself? What would a tree call themself? Or a bird? This one time I was writing about an elm tree and I thought, What is it that birds sing about you? because there’s a recognition, a reciprocity and awareness. It's like, This walnut tree has given us walnuts, when it's not it's not. When it’s windy I land here. So I'm like, There's got to be a song, because that was something we learned: that birds have different kinds of songs. And so they'll have alarm songs, or songs for looking for mates, or songs of joy. And I imagine that they have got to recognize the rest of life around them. And sing about the dogs. Or sing about squirrels. So yeah, I think when it comes to my identity in nature, I feel like it's always there. And I’m always aware of it. I think the first identity that I recognize is my economic class, growing up in poverty. And then my maleness is usually next, and then my brownness.

Can you talk more about your writing? Do you write a lot about nature and the outdoors?

Yeah, I am. I’m writing a lot more, and there’s definitely this rebirth, this acknowledgement, this acceptance. I’ve always wanted to write, but I did not like reading. And in grad school, I had to write these papers, so I would write alongside something that brought me joy. And everyone was reading Mary Oliver and Terry Tempest Williams – the canon of white naturalist literature. I thought, I’m not gonna read this, I'm gonna find something else. I don't remember if I found anything at the time, but I was just writing about nature and relations and reading other stuff. I think José González, the founder of Latino Outdoors, his writing really gave me permission to write. And every now and then he writes like he speaks, and he speaks with a slight accent, occasionally. And so, just to see that it's out there, and that everybody accepts that and loves it, I was like, Oh, I can write and my mistakes aren't necessarily mistakes as much as they are nuances in relation to words. That's how I speak sometimes. Yeah, like why can't we end a sentence with as, which I don't do, still. But there's, you know, things like that that just make me want to play with that. 
So now I do consider myself a poet and I write mostly about place. But I think yeah some of the early writing was definitely emotional, just like getting out stuff. When I was in high school, a friend committed suicide and that was so painful, and so one of the first things I wrote was about that. I hadn’t really processed it until I was working landscaping with another friend, after high school. And we were talking about it. And one morning I just didn't show up to work because I needed to say what was on my mind, and had some dreams where I was revisiting this friend. So that was the first time that I sat down and wrote, and it felt really good. And ever since then I just revisited it to just discharge emotional turmoil. And now it's definitely changed to more of an inquisitive honoring of place like, What is it? What’s up? What am I missing here?

Do you have a favorite way to be outside?

Gosh! I like looking out the window in a good place, but I was still grappling with a sense of discomfort about the outdoors – like it’s cold and it’s messy. I think biking has been it. In Denver, me and my buddy got bikes and would bike to one another. I joined a non-traditional Latino Greek fraternity. So I connected with this brotherhood. From that group I found a few fellas and we just really hit it off, I like camping, I like biking, and even if we just go to the park, and just spill out snacks, and just hang out, that was the ticket. So, biking was really my reengagement into the outdoors. It felt really good.

How would you talk about your experience spilling your snacks out onto the grass at a park versus a living room floor? Does it make a difference to be outside with community?

You know, we did that, too. We would spill out our snacks on the kitchen floor and we called it an altar. So like anything is an altar if you call it that. And we would be sitting around the living room or in the kitchen, and anything that was in the middle was up for grabs. That was the other thing – like everyone has their own stuff – but we were trying to create a culture of sharing. Me and Luis. And we also liked having a campfire in the backyard. And even if there was a whole party going on, and actually dancing, we knew we were going to be in the backyard later for a long time.
Something else I want to share is that when I was graduating from undergrad – and I don’t quite know how to make sense of this, it seems accidental, and it’s a little dark-ish – but it seemed that anytime I would do something good, I would have a cousin going into the system for a long duration. So at my undergrad I was finishing with a degree in civil engineering – it took me a long time. I was 25 when I finally got it. But then my cousin was sentenced to five years. And so it was always like Gosh that is so painful. And it happened when I was going through my Master’s Program, same thing. And so I think there was a long time that I was in my cabin on weekends, just kind of meditating on incarceration. Like I'm in this cabin, and I can leave anytime I want. And this is my space. But, like, gosh, just to think of someone that I grew up with in prison, I was like, Man, this is not fair, this is so bizarre. So I really do think what's so great about being outside, as a person of color with family that's thats going through it, is that I do send back a little bit of joy. I'm always harvesting joy. And like whenever I look at the moon, or the sky, and I would always be like Man I'm sending these sunrises back to y'all. Or like these 14ers in Colorado and I’d just see this beautiful view and be like, This is great, isn't it, it's like this is great for us, and I really wish my cousin could be here. I feel a little bit more healthy in those relationships now. And so I don't do that as much anymore. I feel like I'm more in the present, and I'm just harvesting my own joy, writing it down, and then sharing it with these young people out here in real time. And just trying to be like, This is friggin awesome. We have iron in our sand. That’s why it's reddish. And if we built a kiln and melted this down we’d have iron. Like you know that just changes the game. And they're listening to me go on and on about it. And just seeing them make connections, it’s really good. Then one of the boys will find a big stone and call us over and say look at this one, it has a lot of iron in it!

What would you say to someone who is scared of the outdoors or intimidated by what they might find?

Yeah, we could do better. The way we do it here. If you could admit that. I would encourage someone who's not feeling comfortable in the outdoors to get into journaling. A long time ago I read this book called King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, and it's like from the 80s. It's a little dated. I put together a timeline of this evolution of masculinity work and awareness. And it ends with the book Amateur – so it’s getting better. James Baldwin. Just like offering better conversations. Anyways, within King, Warrior, Magician, Lover the authors – who are social scientists – recommend that you write. That you have a conversation with yourself. And dialogue. Write down the question, Why am I afraid of the outdoors? And answer it honestly. It's between you and you. And I use that practice with other things. And when I write and can externalize it – get it out there and look at what it is that I'm afraid of, whether in my intimate relationships, or fear of the future, or whatever it is – then you can have a conversation with that version of you, who’s holding that fear. And kind of nurture them, or give perspective, or come up with alternatives. For example if you’re afraid of a black bear, or for instance the two cougars that are in our community right now (because the fires have pushed them out of their nature habitat), then you can begin to deal with that fear. So a friend recently ran into the black bear up here in Jewett creek. On that mountain right now there's a bear, like a teenager, really. When you see the pictures, you’re like that's just a growing baby. It's not really that big of a threat. Of course, you want to be careful. But yeah, if you were afraid of those things, you can write them down and then determine how you’d want to prepare – with bear spray, for instance. And if your fear is running into racists in the backcountry, which does happen, people with Confederate flags or white supremacist symbols, then maybe there are different ways to prepare. For me, my mom once said, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear but of strength, courage, and sound mind.” I remind myself of that and thatI wasn’t made to be afraid. I had an experience with a friend recently at my storage unit. I was unloading things so that he could assess how to help me build shelves. And I was moving fast and trying not to be in the way. And he said to me and to himself, It’s okay. We are allowed to exist. People can move around us. And I guess I needed to hear that, and I need to say that to myself more too. Like, I’m allowed to exist.