Member-only story
On Being Black Outside
Nature is for everyone — yet the outdoors are consistently offered only as a White refuge
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
It takes time and pressure. Six hundred million years ago, what would one day be Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area sat beneath the ocean. Nearly two miles of sediment formed into a layer of white limestone; over eons, the Earth’s crust rose, displacing more sediment, rich with iron, that oxidized into the pale red color of the canyon walls. Today, more than two million people each year flock to Red Rock, 15 miles outside Las Vegas.
Lately, I’ve been pondering the idea of what it means to be Black in historically fraught spaces but never more so than when I’m outside. Here, I’m talking about what is nominally called the “outdoors,” the mountains and canyons and desert valleys of southern Nevada, California, and Utah—places that make up my home in the Mojave Desert. But the word could also mean any number of environments in the manicured and mapped wilderness that have become synonymous with White recreation and professional amateurism.
It is certainly easier to claim that everything natural should belong to everyone. It’s also easy to slip into the comforts that…
