Welcome to the Bonfire. The place where your stories are heard. A place where you can connect! Post your story below and upload a photo to share. You’ve heard about how we came to love adventure sports. Now we want to hear about you! Whether you belong to a multi-generational outdoor family or you just tried hiking for the first time, your story is important! If you’ve been inspired by the stories from Melanin Base Camp, let us know! Or grab a drink, find a rock and just enjoy the vibes.
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As knowledge of the outdoors tends to be handed down generationally, this broken chain has denied today’s black youth the tools they need to be able to tackle the outdoors with any degree of confidence […] we have effectively become an urbanised people.
Read MoreDo you love the outdoors? Do you have a lot of outdoorsy friends? Are most of them White? Well, you might relate to the following experiences. Eugene Pak lays out ten things he wishes his outdoorsy White friends knew about him..
Read MoreThere aren’t many role models for aspiring Black climbers and we take much longer to receive support as athletes.
Read More“We’re asking, what are my challenges; what keeps me away from climbing and what brings me towards it,” said Melissa. The intention is that, by focusing on content and a diverse user experience, they can move beyond the one note depiction of climbers as white, cisgender, able-bodied and male.
Read MoreMountain Project, and REI by extension, were more comfortable with protecting the rights of first ascensionists than with envisioning a future where no climber has the power to name a climbing route Black Chicks in Heat.
Read More…they have the means, the resources to condition themselves for the single-minded pursuit of an irrelevant task that adds no value to the world, that saves no one, that does nothing to address actual problems. And we, the audience watch to see if, with every possible resource and assurance, they are able to complete the task. Spoiler alert, they usually do.
Read MoreMy goal is to erase the stigma of being an African-American who is afraid of camping, or hiking, or swimming, and to change the narrative that white folks have about what black people do or don't do.
Read MoreDawn Wall and Free Solo took up so much screen time, so much cultural space, that I am left feeling as though none of the work around diversity in the outdoor industry is ever going to pan out if we keep bolstering straight, cis-gendered, white men as demigods.
Read MoreI remember my relatives yelling at me to stop playing in the sun; I remember my aunt telling my cousin that her skin was dark and ugly—casually, as if discussing something as mundane as the weather
Read MoreWhenever I grew fatigued, the backhanded compliments kept me going. “You look so much better with straight hair!” and “when your hair is straight, you look so exotic!” were the most common. There was no way I could go back to feeling ugly, “too black” or less than.
Read More…I finally realized that my inner discomfort is rooted in a feeling of not-belonging. The problem is that we live in a society dominated by whiteness, and I will always be othered because I am not white.
We need to cultivate a welcoming environment; to see other minorities thriving in order to set an example of acceptance. Being "the only one" is not enough. Individual stories of accomplishment are not enough.
Read MoreThe outdoors do not always feel like a great place for a woman of color because of the other people who occupy, and in most cases have ownership of that space. The same people who claim there is no barrier are often the ones building the fence while denying they’re holding a hammer and nails.
Read MoreThey’ll tell me how beautiful my land is, how strong the people are—the incredible generosity of the incredibly poor. They’ll ask me if I’ve ever been to my homeland without ever knowing the deep, inter-generational heartbreak of that question.
Read MoreA couple years ago I began working with the migrant youth in my community. Their fears, insecurities, and internalized shame were all so similar to me. They were mine.
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