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Tag: #latinooutdoors

Ocean Teaching Us To Love Nature

por Michael Brito

Michael Brito grew up in Southern California, where the long stretches of sandy beaches inspired his love and connection to the outdoors. As a high school student, he would stake out bonfire pits with friends and watch the waves at the beach. Like generations before, he connected with his community around a fire. The fire’s warmth, crashing waves, and the painted sunset pulled him away from everything. Brito found a connection to the earth on those long beach days.

Brito attended UC Davis initially as a Political Sciences major. While he felt the need to pursue a career connecting people for the common good, he struggled to figure out how he could do so while finding an occupation that sparked a fire in him. After two years of struggles as an undergrad, Brito found his community among students studying Marine Sciences. Being part of this community allowed him to look closer at the coastal marine life they were observing. Very quickly, he created an even deeper connection with the ocean.

This community of students inspired Brito to switch his degree and pour all his remaining time into studying and asking ecological questions about coastal oceans. Becoming familiar with the neighboring marine life or how marine algae produces more oxygen than all the world’s forests sparked that fire Brito had been searching for. He became aware of how the world’s oceans are suffering from climate change yet protecting us by absorbing the carbon dioxide humans have been pumping into the atmosphere. Deeply moved, Brito was mobilized and became an advocate for ocean conservation. After college, he worked on the first ever captive rearing program for the critically endangered Sunflower sea star, Pycnopodia helianthoides. While this was important work, he felt he could make a more lasting impact on conservation by engaging with coastal communities.

Brito stumbled upon the Mendocino Coast on a road trip and was left in awe by the beautiful coastline. He immediately found a job in Fort Bragg with Pacific Environmental Education Center (PEEC), teaching fourth to eighth graders about the Mendocino coast’s natural history. He now works with the Noyo Center for Marine Science, supporting the mission of promoting conservation through the education of the local community. Brito hopes to work with the Noyo Center for Marine Science to reach Mendocino county’s Latinx communities and give them guided access to outdoor spaces.

Brito believes fostering an outdoors that welcomes diverse groups of people is essential because everyone must be given a chance to connect to the earth and green spaces. When Western thought-centric ideas dominate a space, they can exclude other ways of thinking and discourage others from being part of it. As a person of color, he understands that there is an egregious lack of leaders of color. Having navigated through white-dominated spaces, Brito believes that we must continue to engage local underrepresented communities so that everyone can one day be part of solving current issues such as climate change. The solution starts with creating opportunities for Latinx and people of color to get outside and have an enriching community.

The most significant barrier Brito anticipates as the major roadblock for people to get outside is the difficulty for low-income families of color to afford to spend time outdoors. This problem has only been made worse by the lack of accessible public transportation. As Brito continues his work, he hopes that more community members want to contribute to Latino Outdoor’s mission to get all people outside.

Michael Brito is a 24-year-old who recently joined the Latino Outdoors North Coast Chapter as an Outings Leader. He’s worked as a teacher naturalist for P.E.E.C. and gained a deep appreciation for the Mendocino Coast. Michael enjoys reading books about marine life and exploring the local tide pools. He looks forward to creating a more inclusive, diverse, and welcoming space for all in the outdoors.

I’m a Latina Trail Runner

por Candace Gonzales

My love for the outdoors comes from my parents and my family. When I was a child, my parents took me camping in the summer. We camped at a beautiful reservoir where I learned to swim and play in the water. My tios and primos camped with us along with our close family friends, and it was a wonderful way to grow up. My family would also spend countless hours in the summer in my grandfather’s garden picking peas and strawberries to eat straight off the vine. Not to mention in the fall when we would all gather at my grandparents’ house to roast and peel green chilies. Those memories I cherish, and I believe fostered in me a love for the outdoors.

Although being outdoors and being in nature was something that I was fortunate to be exposed to as a child, as a young adult, especially in my twenties, I got away from the outdoors. The busy city life called to me, and my goals became getting into my career and enjoying the city’s night scene—the partying, the friendships, and just living that fast city life. Late work nights, crazy weekends, and I did not make the outdoors a priority.

However, one priority I have always had is running. I have run most of my adult life. Thanks to my love for running, it’s what brought me back into the outdoors. In 2018, I stumbled upon trail running by signing up for a part road/trail race, the Turquoise Lake 20K in beautiful Leadville, Colorado. After that race, I knew that exploring trails and being in nature on trails was my new calling as a runner.

Of course, I answered this call and immediately started trail running on the local trails in the Denver metro area. I was addicted, and it was so much fun. Not to mention there is something very spiritual and healing about being in the outdoors. It has this way of allowing you to see all the beauty in the world. Although it was so beautiful to be out on the trail, one thing that stood out to me, especially in a community like Denver, where the Latinx population is the second-largest population, was the lack of diversity on the trails. I found this to be challenging. Challenging in the sense that when you are new to a sport, it can be intimidating, and when you don’t see anyone who looks like you enjoying it can feel a bit unwelcoming.

The outdoors should be welcoming to everyone. All humans should have the opportunity to experience the pure joy you get from running, hiking, or walking the trails with the sun shining on you and the mountains as views. The beauty of being outdoors and discovering nature is an experience all should have regardless of gender, class, race, age, sexuality, and nationality. For me, I recognize that I have a role in making the outdoors feel welcoming and that when I pull up to the trailhead rocking my Spanish music on full blast, that’s me saying I’m here, I’m Latina, I’m a trail runner, and I love the outdoors too. When other gente come to experience the trail, I want them to feel welcomed, and I want to help inspire younger generations to get outdoors and experience the outdoors.

That is why Latino Outdoors is such an important nonprofit and one that is close to my heart. The work that Latino Outdoors does to make the outdoors welcoming, from education, conservation, and just teaching people to love the outdoors, is so important. That is why this fall, I have chosen to use the sport I love (trail running) to help raise funds for Latino Outdoors. Just as I was fortunate to enjoy nature as a child, and I want our future generation to also be that fortunate. I believe Latino Outdoors is doing the grassroots work to make this happen. ¡Andale!

Candace Gonzales lives in Colorado’s front range. She is an avid trail runner who has complete various trail marathons, 30K trail runs, and 50K trail runs. She loves being outside and is a passionate supporter of Latino Outdoors.

Yo Alcanzo: #SheSePuede

por Dani Reyes-Acosta

Lo alcanzamos? Loaded with meanings, this word stays with me, constantly. At every stage of my life, I’ve discovered different aspects of its significance, complexities unfolding as I ascend deeper and higher into the mountains. For this child of the sun, descendant of Filipino-Mexican immigrants and Spanish-Mexican settlers, alcanzar brings expectation and fear, together with possibility and reaching. Together, these meanings define me. Alcanzo lo que puedo. Sueño en posibilidades.

Expectation and Fear

Born in Santa Monica, California, I spent the first fifteen years of my life near the ocean. Surfing, biking, and swimming ruled my childhood in Playa del Rey, nearly as much as piano practice and extra homework. As my Tata reminded me once: “My little Danielle will be a great doctor or lawyer.” My father would have added “…or concert pianist.”

I’m not quite sure if the expectations on my young shoulders weighed heavier from the memory of recent immigration or our history as Californios. But expectation drove me to achieve in a way that I never questioned and appreciated only later in life. Expectation meant doing well, because no other option existed. It was for this reason that my mother had worked her summer breaks from UCSB in the grape fields. Inasmuch my father seemed to be established in Los Angelino culture, in our church, in our neighborhood, I sensed, deeply, the work he put in. Success wasn’t given: it was earned.

I remember the togetherness of our family’s experiences: annual trips to Mammoth or Big Bear showed me that car trips in the Cadillac could take us to wonderful places. Camping in the mountains of Southern California or gazing out the windows of Yosemite’s Awhawnee gave me a glimpse into a future I never expected I’d embrace.

When life took me to Fresno, in California’s Central Valley, I found adolescent solace in distance runs under the baking sun. I paddled for inner peace in the surf while attending the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). I worked, tirelessly, to make lemonade from the lemons that life had given me.

When my maternal grandmother, who grew up in El Centro, CA, mocked the Castellano accent I’d picked up from studying abroad in Spain after my father’s death, I gazed at the palm trees rustling against an electric blue sky. I belonged out there, with the wind.

“The mountains have my heart, but the ocean owns my soul”.

Possibilities and Reaching

When I moved to Oregon for a competitive corporate job, I had two choices for recreation: volver al mar, a place I knew, or turn to the mountains. Nostalgia me llamó: the mountains held the secrets of my childhood, a happiness I hadn’t known for years. I bought a ski pass. I taught myself to snowboard. It was like surfing, a sport I’d known since 14. My employer had an indoor rock climbing gym; intimidated by the high-tech machines and former Olympic athletes found throughout the rest of the building, I went there to explore. The vertical realm intrigued me.

Six years and six countries later, an urge to explore the upper realm of lo posible has taken me to mountains like the Andes, Cascades, Coast Range, Rockies, Sierra Nevada, and Tetons. I’ve ticked off notable ascents (climbing) and descents (splitboarding aka backcountry snowboarding) not just for the sake of achievement, but often for something simpler. Joy and healing couple nicely with personal growth and empowerment.

My journey to climbing, together with hiking, camping, and snowboarding, didn’t just teach me that recreation could be a declaration of freedom. It was also an act of dissent, a rejection of a broader system and society that often tore me down and betrayed me. It was an assertion to my right for self-care and self-determination. Climbing and snowboarding didn’t just provide the happiness or empowerment many of us seek; they also gave me hope.

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

Audre Lorde

The tiny spark of hope I found hiking on the trail, climbing at the crag, or snowboarding down steep snowy faces turned into something bigger. The fire inside me began to burn brighter, stronger. Si alcancé subir this mountain all by myself, what else could I do? Could I hike by myself, lead climb up a tower, or build a community that supported me, unequivocally, in all I do? Could I put my energy and time into things that really mattered to me, and build a career and life I love?

Mountains give me a lens to see the role choice plays in my life, every single day. From the results yielded by the hours put into training or the support I receive from the community I’ve cultivated, intention guides where my energy goes.

Out here, up here, life looks different, feels newer. I can see that we are just individual musical notes in a symphony beyond our comprehension. So I risk things: playing my own tune, finding my own key. I step out of my comfort zone, often, and find rewards I never thought possible. I risk failure, too, because I know there will always be a lesson.

My experiences in the backcountry have helped me find my truest self and start to realize my greatest potential—whether as an individual or member of a bigger community. This is the joy of embracing that I am part of this ecosystem; this is why I go outside.

En búsqueda de los límites de lo posible o ser parte de la vida que nos rodea: por eso, me voy afuera.

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Dani Reyes-Acosta is a freelance brand strategist, educator, writer, and advocate redefining who plays outside and how we build community with others on this planet. She is also a splitboarder, climber, runner, and waterwoman partnering with several organizations to build a better future. Her work explores regenerative economies in the American West, how heritage and adversity inform identity, how inclusive marketing can pave the way to the future, and more. Learn more at DaniReyesAcosta.com.