Guest Blog: Exploring Love for the Land and the Impact of the Outdoors on Identity
I had never heard of the Delaware Water Gap until my freshman year of college. Months before classes were scheduled to start, I had signed up on a whim to my school’s outdoor orientation program, thinking that it would be of great benefit to make friends before school officially started. Although I grew up in Salt Lake City, I was never- in any sense of the word- “outdoorsy.” I was, as a matter of fact, quite indifferent to the whole notion of outdoor recreation, with a strong desire to live in a large metropolitan area like New York City or Los Angeles. I didn’t own any outdoor gear, and mostly shut down ideas of hikes with my siblings, who have both been outdoor enthusiasts. I didn’t expect much from the trip beyond making a few friends and coming home with a lot of mosquito bites. What I came away with, though, was invaluable.
On our first day out on the river, I was struck by how eerily peaceful everything was. The sound of birds chirping overhead and insects humming was constant. The fauna at the shore, the late summer sun’s gleam on the water currents, the soft sound of my paddle breaking the stillness of the water – I was immediately drawn. I was particularly surprised, however, at how everything seemed to change in the outdoors. With no loud honks or the sounds of a city drowning the mind, it almost felt as if time itself had stopped.
A day earlier I was consumed with doubts about college, having moved out East without my parents or any family to rely on to help navigate my new home. I was one of the few kids who was alone. The fear and sense of dread started to creep to the front of my mind. Would I even make friends? Would I settle in at all? I was afraid of even starting up a conversation with students around me. But once I took the first few paddles into the river, all my worries seemed to vanish. Here I was, a worried first year drawn to silence by the embrace of the scene I found in front of me. All my life I had refused to immerse myself in the outdoors, yet the most at peace and confident I felt was right there in a blue raft in the river.
To say this moment was life changing would be hyperbolic. I still had to reckon with the hard realities of college, but in my most testing moments, the scene from the river always brought everything back into focus. Later that year, I became a leader in the same program, something that my friends back home, including my siblings, were genuinely surprised by. My engagement with the program is something I consider the focal point of my collegiate experience. In many ways, it pushed me to officially declare my concentration in public health. Many may look at public health and conservation work as mutually exclusive. However, I find them to be inextricably linked. My newfound fascination for the outdoors led me to take a class on environmental justice. There I learned that oftentimes, the inability of marginalized peoples to stake claim to public lands issues produce dramatic inequities, from exposure to air pollution to instances of leaks in local water systems. My interest in the outdoors grew from there, not just because I wanted to expand my interest in recreational activities, but because I realized that Latino communities often were the ones protecting these lands and preserving them. Our very ancestors were stewards, and stewardship is a value that continues to be passed down generationally, despite the imposition of colonialist ideals. By being excluded from conservation narratives, our communities experience harm and in some cases, severe health impacts.
When I think back to the Delaware Water Gap, I think not only of the potential impact of the outdoors on the individual, but on our collective identity as Latinx people. We are defined by a common love for the land and all it has to offer. Our communities suffer when the land suffers, and I can’t help but feel optimistic that now is our time to bolster the Latinx presence in the world of the outdoors through meaningful leadership, action, and engagement. We happen to live in a unique moment politically, with decisions under the previous administration impacting the capacities of federal agencies and departments like the BLM and the DOI. Rebuilding these entities provides us with the unique opportunity of staking and expanding our political power, and we must be willing to fight for it.