Posted on 08/28/2016 10:55:31 AM PDT by PROCON
Last month, two friends and I backpacked for a week in the Sierra Nevada. We hiked through meadows dotted with wildflowers, slept beneath snow-draped peaks and met plenty of other hikers: the dad and son whose Green Bay Packers caps sparked a conversation about our mutual ties to Wisconsin; scientists from UC Santa Cruz studying flowers and rock formations; five recent college grads from Kentucky who were hiking the John Muir Trail before they scattered to begin their adult lives.
But as the days passed, I grew increasingly troubled by the people we didn’t meet. There were a few Asian hikers, including a couple of hapas like me (I’m half Japanese and half Polish) and one of my friends was half-Iranian, but not a single backpacker who was Latino or African American.
This near-total absence of people of color — which I’ve noticed on past trips as well — was particularly striking because it was such a contrast to my everyday life. I live and work in Los Angeles. The majority of people in my working life are Latino, African American or Asian, and the people in my personal life, including my Mexican American spouse, are reflective of the city’s population.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Thanks for the link. It was a good story, even if in Weekly Standard with their hovering masthead on the screen.
I feel sorry for the kid in the story. It appears his likely career will be as the follow-on model for Pajama Boy in ObamaCare 3.0. Visiting Yellowstone to only experience the outdoors on the terms allowed by the NPS is like accepting that turkey bacon is just like pork bacon...NOT!!
Anyone who sees a mother bear with cubs on the trail and is “relieved” must live someplace I wouldn’t even want to visit carrying two sidearms and wearing a Kevlar vest...
I don’t freak out when I see mountain lion tracks on/beside the trail I’m hiking-but I do walk backwards out of there swinging a big stick and singing something like Dirty Deeds as loud as possible-most day hikers from the city that I’ve met on the trail go hysterical if you point out those tracks-and I always do-they are so oblivious to their surroundings-it is so much fun to watch...
I hike and camp.
Don't be a Finn-o-Phobe! :-)
I forget... whose shrine is that?
Heard a similar story regarding a troop from NJ mistreating pack animals while backpacking at Philmont Scout Ranch (NM) years ago. Don’t know the truth behind the story but it certainly seemed plausible to me.
Just as a side-note, the manual of the 80s/90s that I used as a Scoutmaster with my son and his peers had lost any of that “urban” flavor beyond having appropriately mixed participation in photos.
Either "The Gentle Giant" or "Saint Trayvon of Skittles"
That’s why I rarely see blacks skiing. I see even fewer blacks windsurfing or kiteboarding. Or waterskiing. I guess it reminds them of being something - who knows what - they are offended or hurt by.
Interesting. I am poor and used to be very poor, and lived in a large tent for a year when I couldn’t afford rent, and also in a large tent for half a year when I moved on property and built very gradually.
I loathe camping. PLus I already live in the woods, in a house.
So if I want to keep them out of my neighborhood, I just have to plant more trees?
Black people generally don’t do “outdoors.” I’ve seen so many Black coworkers lose their minds when we come across a snake it’s not even funny any longer. And I mean freak out to the point of wanting to go home. This is in an outdoor construction setting in the deep South and I’m not talking about travelers from another part of the country. These are Black construction workers who’ve grown up locally; men and women in their 30s to 50s. I’d swear they were taught as children to be deathly afraid of any reptile.
And don’t even get me started on spiders...
Damn! You owe me a keyboard.
Carbonated adult beverages spewed through the nose, is most unpleasant.
what a BULLSHIP story, start to finish...
first he should be glad that the trails are mostly his kind....the other kind has an astronomical rate of violence towards everybody else..
secondly, he should be thrilled that he is with peace loving social people...
he can just shove it if he thinks we need anymore "outreach"...
if they don't want to hike, bike, fish, hunt, bird watch, etc, then they don't want to...
I can't even imagine the fiasco it would be to drag a bunch a people up into wild areas....think of some of the museums and zoos in DC when the human packs are running thru destroying things, frightening animals...
nobody but nobody cares that whites are basically locked out of many pro sports and college sports...
nobody but nobody cares that all these music and tv and movie award shows have a preponderance of black crap....
Well in alll fairness the last time they all got on a boat they had to pic cotton and play basketball to the delight of white folk coast to coast
I did see something while traveling by car this summer...a large group of ASIAN motorcycle riders, mostly with their wives...
you see some people can break the stereotypes and others just refuse...
Now, now, now..... I’m sure they make An environmentally friendly solar power pack so your can use your curling iron and hair dryer.
:-^)
Backpacking is way high on the list of SWPL.
“For many, the wilderness, historically, is dangerous territory. Escaped slaves passed through forests full of danger, much of it posed by other people. Mexican and Japanese immigrants and African American sharecroppers worked to exhaustion in the fields. These brutal histories may help explain why some groups might not be drawn to the idea of spending time — let alone sleeping — outdoors.”
Yeah, a lot of Japanese immigrants and African American sharecroppers were worked to exhaustion in mountain meadows, vast forests of pines, and/or the Sonoran Desert!
Why, Half Dome Rock isn’t natural! It was built by slave labor! And the Grand Canyon? Dug by Japanese immigrants!
How can we whites not appreciate the oppression of Yosemite, the Grand Canyon or Glacier National Park? After all...glaciers are WHITE! We have a national park dedicated to whiteness! How oppressive is that?!
See #16...
I worked with a guy who lived in a TeePee on a campground...
I really don’t think anyone posting is trying to get blacks to hike or camp...
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