About 30 years ago, I went on a winter church retreat at camp in northern Michigan. In our group was a guy named Dave who happened to be black. He was raised in the city and probably hadn’t seen two trees together before.
We were at the camp sledding hill and Dave decided to go back to the main camp, about 1/4 mile away. The road was easy to follow.
At lunch, I didn’t see him so I checked the cabin to make sure he wasn’t asleep. He wasn’t there either.
I asked the retreat leader to announce and see if anyone had seen him.
He described him as six feet tall, shaved head, red jacket. I finally stood up and said “It’s the black guy” whereupon everyone finally realized who we were looking for.
We quickly organized a search party. About an hour later, My and my search partner found him. He was still walking but close to full blown hypothermia.
As we warmed him up, he told a story of walking across a frozen lake and seeing three deer. He said he screamed and ran, thinking the deer would chase him.
I told him that the deer were more afraid of him since he was the first black guy they’d ever seen.
I used to see older black men fishing a lot in the canals in the Metro-East area of St. Louis, and at Wolf Lake in Chicago. Those aren’t exactly backwoods locales, though.
A few years back the National Park Service started making an effort to encourage minorities to visit parks because they were vastly outnumbered by whites.
It's virtue signaling with profit in mind.
For Pete’s sake already. This whole topic is making me sick.
I see all kinds of colors, in all kinds of adds on tv, and I think it’s mostly gibberish cr@p that they have to show to demonstrate they’re a diverse outward looking company!
if my wives skin colorPick a product, pick a company. THEY’RE ALL DOING IT!!
I think I’m the most unrepresented. Guess my sex, and color? Guess if I’m a heterosexual, guess if my wife’s skin color matches mine? So many commercials out there to blur what America was vs where “they” want to to take us!!!
Remember-diversity is our strength-—gack!
Just let people be people already!
Sick of the social engineering cr@p!
I did come across a nice wilderness area where I saw minorities. So I also saw graffiti and utes blocking traffic and staring down drivers.
Disgusting cave in. Tell the critics to go to hell. Can you rent actors from an actors’ agency by skin color and whether part of LGBT?
funny ,I spent a lot of my life in the woods and the outdoors and I really haven’t seen many people of color there.
I don’t know if I completely agree with this.
I know when you get far away from cities there does tend to be more Anglos, but there are lots of public parks out west, where a huge majority are largely Hipanic.
By far, and away the huge majority.
Not necessarily camping, but absolutely using public parks.
Big time.
Blacks don’t as much do that stuff. Never saw many as scouts. Fishing, sure. Camping, not so much. I’m sure the advertiser was just being a hateful racist by not having POCs in their ad.
Yes, white people dominate outdoors.
The only other people I have ever seen in the woods, on the trails or at the creek are Hispanic people, which are also white people.
No but the Texas State Parks are full of Mexicans all the time.
the national parks know this is so and has tried to encourage minorities to go camping more.
You want the real answer??
Yes, yes they do. Don’t believe me? Do ANYTHING that is considered “outdoor” recreation, hiking, camping, fishing, hunting, canoeing, kayaking... spend as much time as you like doing it, and keep a head count of nothing more than the racial makeup of those you run into ...
Unless you are in a urban park near a large Asian/Indian population center, you will not see a single minority remotely represented at levels they are in the general population.
You will see the overwhelming majority, are, for whatever reason, caucasian.
Anyone else gotten an LL Bean catalog in the mail lately? I like their Oxford shirts and have worn them for years. In the past 6 months or so, I’d say 1/3rd of the models in the catalog are now POC. It doesn’t get much more whitebread than LL Bean, but they are obviously jumping on the bandwagon.
Like virtually all of the previous posters, I’ve never seen a POC hunting during my 35+ seasons in the field, but I’m a northerner. A black friend of mine, who is originally from rural Mississippi, is an avid hunter and camper, because he was raised that way, just like I was. I’m guessing that down south, more blacks are county folks and thus are more likely to hunt and enjoy the outdoors.
Skin color aside, I know many people who are afraid of the woods, especially at night. I live in a heavily forested area with bear activity and many of my urban/suburban friends think I’m crazy. I just tell them that trees don’t mug people. They may drop a limb on you, but that’s just gravity, not malice. I can live with that.
Nobody’s preventing black people from camping, hunting or other outdoor activities. It’s not uncommon to see black hunters, boaters and ATV riders in the south at least. I know the big ATV park down east in North Carolina, just about as redneck of a place as you could possibly imagine but great fun, has a fair number of black regulars and they’re quite welcome there, never mind the Confederate flags flying everywhere. This is yet another racial tempest in a teapot. What, are progressives going to go out and kidnap black people and force them to do things outdoors against their will just to make the numbers look pretty to them? Sheer idiocy.
Ask Lewis and Clark
Illegals love the outdoors.
They treat it like it’s a big garbage can and giant toilet.
Man, the magazine National Geographic is so racist. Showing villages and other stuff in Africa all the time. /s