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Category: Representation Matters

The Mountains We Share

por Felipe Vieyra

I share this story with the hope and intention that by doing so, our comunidades latinas (latino communities), that we start reclaiming the outdoor narrative here in the United States, and that more BIPOC folks lift up their stories and connection to the outdoors, we can inspire folks into action for those who want to build a more inclusive and diverse outdoor community.

I remember my dad sitting my brother, sister, and me down on our living room carpet, so excited to share a story about our abuelita. Our abuelita was going to be staying with us for a few years in our home in Fort Morgan, Colorado. Fort Morgan was a small agricultural town in the eastern plains of Colorado. My parents and I had immigrated to this cow-town in the early 90s from Mexico in the pursuit of our “American Dream”. We were excited to hear about our abuelita. I apparently met her when I was a baby but you hardly ever hold onto your early childhood memories so she was someone who I was barely getting to know but someone that held a special place in my father’s life. My siblings were born in Colorado so they would truly be meeting her for the first time.

Your abuelita grew up in the sierras of Michoacan. Our family had a ranch and I remember growing up on it and exploring the mountainsides with your uncles and aunts and your abuelito and abueltia my father would say. I could barely fathom how it must have been to grow up in the mountains of Michoacan. What a life! I exclaimed! It was a hard life but one with good food, hard work, family, and best of all, the mountains we shared my father responded with.

My abuelita would later share with me that they were forced to sell that ranch and that they eventually moved into the city in Morelia, Michoacan. Being newcomers to the United States, my family and I didn’t have much growing up. Both of my parents worked at the meatpacking plant in Fort Morgan and my father would often work overtime but what I could always count on when spring and summer would come would be our family trips up to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. It’s those trips and car rides that I nostalgically remember from my childhood. The band Sonora Dinamita music playing on the way there, the picnics we would have along the way, and then sitting down around the campfires sharing moments that we would never forget with each other. That was the connection we built as a family, that I built with the outdoors. While our family went through a lot with the US immigration system, our escape was the outdoors. Exploring the mountains and outdoors of Colorado brought us together.

My abuelita came, stayed with us, lived a long life alongside our family, and passed away while I was in college. She was buried right next to my abuelito in a beautiful rainbow grave in the mountains of Michoacan. While we got to enjoy the outdoors and explore the mountains as a family, I realized that there were so many other activities and ways in which we could enjoy the outdoors. I remember mostly white students skipping school to go snowboarding while I was in high school, it wasn’t a luxury I could afford because of cost, the need to do well in school so my parents sacrifices of coming to this country wasn’t in vain and also how far away we were living in the eastern plains and also the perception that it was something only white folks did. My siblings and I grew up. I went to college and it was the same in college. I didn’t get the chance to enjoy snowboarding, mountain biking, and backpacking in those four years at the University of Denver because of the cost, the lack of representation of BIPOC folks in those spaces that made me feel like I didn’t belong.

While I loved the outdoors, the mountains, all of it because of my experiences growing up, it was something that I couldn’t fully enjoy because of how expensive it cost sometimes to access the outdoors and also to often find yourself as the only person of color on the trails. This would get me in my head, trying to think of why I’m one of the few people of color who love backpacking. When I return from my trips, I always come back to the same thoughts:

  • Income Inequality (outdoor products are expensive)
  • The perception that only “White Folks” do these activities (lack of representative media)
  • NO major outdoor brands that create culturally relevant products (especially food products)

There comes a moment when you have to realize that the “system” wasn’t built to be inclusive and has extensive barriers in place that discourage black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), would-be adventurers from participating in wilderness activities. You realize that you need to claim space and that the outdoors ARE for us to enjoy and share. I think of my abuelitos whenever I hit a trail and I think of my family’s joy in being in the outdoors together growing up. I hold onto those memories and remember who I love when I am out and about and if any form of doubt creeps into my head. I remind myself that these are mountains to be shared, mountains that my abuelita would have loved to have explored herself.

As BIPOC folks, we need to remind ourselves of who we love and remind ourselves that we belong in the outdoors. That these mountains are to be shared and that we should feel empowered to be the ones creating new outdoor gear brands, leading outdoor recreational organizations and excursions. We should be at the table demanding change. Felipe is originally from Morelia, Michoacán Mexico but has lived in Colorado since he was 4. He started lifting up his voice regarding educational inequity because of being an immigrant, man of color in school systems that were never meant for either identity.

Felipe is active in the Denver community by being involved with various different boards and commissions. He is currently the co-chair of the Young Latino Philanthropist, the Secretary of Colorado Peoples Alliance C3 board. He also coaches competitive soccer with Club C&C and loves volunteering his time to issues that he cares about and being outdoors and a co-founder of Oso Adventure Meals!

Earth Day Thoughts

por Luis Villa

Today is Earth Day, and I am remembering my years in Costa Rica, helping to plant trees with friends, colleagues, and local community members, including police officers.  I am also thinking about policing in America and its partial origins in the slave patrols of the South, which wanted to maintain slavery and stemmed from economic motivations.

Economic motivation may be as old as humanity itself.  It’s a derivative of the desire to prosper, which in turn, is descended from the survival instinct.

For many, somewhere along the way, the survival instinct became an unrelenting drive to accumulate and hoard wealth. This most visibly manifests itself in socioeconomic systems, capitalism and socialism alike, that become severely unbalanced, where the “haves” are few, the “have nots” are numerous, and the disparity between them becomes so great that the entire system becomes dangerously strained.

We see this in the natural world, when a particular species takes up all the resources, grows too big for its own good, and the entire ecosystem collapses.  Large scale agriculture offers another example.  Forest ecosystems that host rich and resilient biodiversity are cleared away to make room for a particular crop, a single species or monoculture.  At first, the soil and other growing conditions are excellent for that single crop to thrive.  Then, the diminishing returns become increasingly evident.  It takes more and more pesticides, herbicides, and other artificial inputs to suppress all the other species of plants and animals that also want to enjoy the soil, space, water, and other resources.  Eventually, the soil becomes too infertile and the groundwater too contaminated.  Nothing thrives on the land anymore.

“If we pay attention to Nature, we can learn about the importance of diversity and balanced ecosystems”

Luis Villa

Human systems are not exempt from the laws of Nature.

If we pay attention to Nature, we can learn about the importance of diversity and balanced ecosystems.  In human systems, pervasive and growing racial, economic, and other social injustices (along with our constructive and destructive responses to these injustices) are either signs or full-blown alarms that something is off-balance.  They are an indication that we must nurture more diversity, share the soil, and spread the wealth between ourselves and also with the natural world, which is where all our supply chains begin and is ultimately from where we source all our sustenance and wellbeing.

On this Earth Day, I am thinking about the connection between humanity’s social systems and the Planet’s natural systems.  On this day, I am thinking more about sustainability than I am thinking about race, politics, or economics. I am thinking about the need for peace among ourselves and between us and our Planet.

Yo Cuento: Our Trip to Ecuador

por Gabe Gómez

Christina collapsed in a puddle of tears and gasping breath. Her knees and palms were covered in dirt – trekking poles and backpack tossed to the side in frustration. The mountain was taunting her. We were only halfway up.

The largest “mountain” Christina had known prior was the Ravenell Bridge. We both grew up in Charleston, SC. Though, her father had been in the Air Force, so she bounced around a bit more than me. But it was our struggles with identity as people of color, vastly different in our experiences, that led us to this tangled tale.

While I’m Mexican American, I didn’t grow up close to my father’s side of the family. That culture, my birthright, was lost. I was left with a name, a slightly darker complexion, and a lifetime of being the oddball. To my Latinx friends, I was always seen as “the gringo.” And to my non-Latinx friends, I was known as the Mexican. It was a dynamic I didn’t truly understand until much later on in life. To be honest, I felt more “American” than anything else. I was raised on the slow southern customs of Charleston. The grandparents I knew came from Michigan. We’d visit the mountains in the fall and pick apples.

“Well, if we’re going to travel to Ecuador together, we better have dinner first and get to know each other.”

Tina, on the other hand, was a second-generation Ecuadorian. Her mother grew up near Guayaquil while her father was from outside Quito. She came from a large family. Spanish melodies and her Ecuadorian legacy surrounded her. Her Abuela still makes empanadas from scratch, and they eat pernil for Christmas.

Funnily enough, the first conversation Christina and I ever had was about a trip to Ecuador. She and her mother were planning to go, but she wasn’t exactly looking forward to spending so much time together. She jokingly mentioned she could use a travel buddy. Having just visited Peru a couple of years earlier, I’d take any opportunity to get back to South America. Truth be told, I was rather inebriated that evening. It was St. Patty’s Day, and our large group of friends was celebrating appropriately. Christina didn’t believe I would remember a single word of our conversation. But when the next day came, I was the smoothest I had ever been in my entire awkward oddball life. “Well, if we’re going to travel to Ecuador together, we better have dinner first and get to know each other.”


The trip was postponed for a few years, but eventually, I made good on my promise. Eventually, I became that travel buddy.

When I saw where her father was from, so close to the area known as the Avenue of the Volcanoes, I couldn’t believe he didn’t have her hiking before she could crawl! It’s a magical rolling landscape that seems specifically crafted to elicit the most extraordinary adventures. I was completely captivated.

But here Christina was, this person that had never been hiking despite those mountains being in her blood. Part of her birthright had been lost too. She had been dealt dreams of assimilation; dreams in consumption. The lands of her ancestors were forgotten about in the midst of striving for prosperity.

It’s hard to fault her parents, though. If you saw the poverty from which they came, you’d understand wanting to abandon it all – forgetting every ounce of your past. It’s a level of poverty that’s incomprehensible in the US, a level that would influence anyone’s judgment in pursuit of something better.

When Christina and I were planning our trip to Ecuador, I agreed to a week of visiting family if she agreed to a week of hiking around in the mountains with me. It was a deal. I bought her the very first hiking boots she had ever owned. I made sure she was draped in layers of technical fabrics she never knew existed. We even got her a fancy pink backpack for the rest of her essential gear. The mountains were calling, and she was ready.

“Look at where your feet are. You’re standing on the top of a mountain. Did you ever imagine you would be here?” 

Pasochoa was our first hike – an extinct volcano sitting at 13,780ft. It was supposed to be our “easy” climb. But you never know how altitude will affect you – especially when you come from a life at sea level. Christina had just run a half marathon a couple of months before. I thought she would be ok. She wasn’t. She struggled. The mountain broke her physically and mentally. It was the most helpless I’ve ever felt. While I faired significantly better, I couldn’t carry her up the mountain. She had to find the strength to get herself up there. She cried. A lot. She stumbled. A lot. But she never gave up. That’s probably why this is one of my favorite memories. She exhibited far more resilience than a mountain has ever required of me.

When we finally reached the peak, I vividly remember telling her to look down. “Look at where your feet are. You’re standing on the top of a mountain. Did you ever imagine you would be here?”  She smiled. Be it out of the joy of utter relief; still, she smiled. We had a picnic lunch on the top of Pasochoa before making our way back down to our little hacienda. The impact of that single climb had yet to resonate with us. We were too exhausted. We needed a nap.

In the following days, we climbed Rumiñawi and even spent the night in José F. Ribas Refuge on the side of Cotopaxi. I couldn’t be more proud of Christina or more grateful that she was able to connect with the lands of her people. Her story is one that I will always carry with me – she is the reason why I fight for representation in the outdoors. We are peoples of the land – of the sea – of the mountains and beaches. The outdoors is our right, our very breath, our heartbeat. We are all children of Mother Nature, and thus we long to connect with her. That’s what our single hike did for Christina – she reconnected with another part of her identity, with another piece of her soul.

Christina and I now visit the mountains in the fall and eat pernil for Christmas. She still uses her fancy pink backpack every day.