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I remember going to the masjid for the first time in my new American home. It was the early 90’s in Minnesota and I prayed for the first time in my life standing next to Black Muslims and White Muslims. What a country, I thought, as my 8-year-old eyes danced around the room exploring all the different colors and creative ways the Somali and Bosnian women wrapped their hijabs. So many foreign textures and traditions but all of us in our Sunday best, as the Americans say. . In that little masjid, we sat on the floor and listened to an Imam preach in English. But in our silent praying voices we talked to God in our own languages – thanking God for our blessed new American lives and, in the same breath, asking God to help us work harder and earn our keep in this great country. . The immigrant experience is a journey through struggle and humility and faith.  No man, not even at the highest levels of human power, can invalidate the dignity and honor of grit. You, who left everything familiar behind; you, who choose to be vulnerable in the face of fear and failure; you, who offer up your labor and loyalty in profoundly actualized ways; you are the gold bricks with which the American Dream is built.  One by one, we form the foundation of this country. We are this country. And we will stand tall because we are blessed. Hate will come and go, but immigrants are forever. . . . Will you help diversify our public lands? Tag your photos #BrownPeopleCamping

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So honored to be featured by @Outdoorwomen in this interview and supported by @camberoutdoors! It was a great opportunity to tell my story and also shed light on the very real struggles that I and many others face in trying to promote outdoors diversity and equity. As always, thank you to ALL for your support and solidarity. Link to the interview is in my bio. Here's an excerpt from my interview: . "We need to be vulnerable and open to hearing other people’s perspectives but not disregard someone’s truth. The fact is, this is my truth. I have been all over this country to hike and camp and every single time I am one of the few people of color outdoors. That is an objective truth: it’s not a theory, it’s a fact. And we need to acknowledge it and embrace it, so we can get to the root causes of these disparities. We have to work together to push for more equity so we can ultimately grow this community of people who have a genuine connection to the land and as a result of that connection, will love the land and defend its wellbeing in the future." . . Will you help diversify our public lands? Tag your photos #BrownPeopleCamping

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Another year comes to an end and we celebrate now the process of letting go of all that has passed us in 2017 and all the untold stories that await us in 2018. We cheer as we let slide into the ocean of our past, hardships and obstacles we survived over the year. We light candles and wave shiny things to honor the joys we experienced as well. 2017 was a difficult year for me personally - loss, pain, hardships. But I was also blessed with immeasurable fortune, in the form of people, places and things. So it is in that theme that I share with you my best 9+9+9. . Through @BrownPeopleCamping, I've had the honor of meeting incredible people. Too many to name, but every one of them representing the best among us: National Park Service Rangers who've dedicated their lives to serving our public lands; all the fantastic folks who came out to our first ever meet-up hike in Rock Creek Park; living legends like 97-year-old Ms. Kay who survived a Japanese American concentration camp and continues to push for civil liberties; the incredible film makers at @elitedaily who sweated in then sun and shivered in the rain to shoot our first short documentary film; all the advocates and change makers who convened at the SHIFT conference in Wyoming to further our mission of diversifying the outdoors; all the fierce females at @REI's Outessa retreat who empowered me to be a #ForceOfNature; and the incredibly generous team at @airstream_inc (and @AlaskaAir) who welcomed us to a new world of exploration and, with a silver bullet in tow, enabled us to tell more diverse stories from the road. . I have seen joy and wonder and love and struggle. I have laughed and cried and glowed and ached. I close this chapter with a smile and much gratitude, especially to all of you for your solidarity and support. Here's to continuing our growth as a diverse community of lovers of the wild. Here's to the beginning of a new adventure. #HappyNewYear #BestNine2017 #DiversifyOutdoors

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I fell in love with the United States as a child. Born and raised in a country far away where Indian summers are just summers, I learned how to lace up snow boots and walk clumsily through the horizons of my new hyphenated identity. I learned this country the way any child learns anything at the age of 8. I was afraid and excited and fell in love with the wild spaces that lay at the outskirts of my new American life. But even at a young age, I was aware of the fact that I didn't look like the others in the campground or hiking trails-- but I didn’t dare wonder why because as immigrants we just accepted facts as they were presented to us. . So much has changed since then. I am a grown woman now. No longer the “other” in my immigrant mind. I am the patriotic American I always aspired to become. I am flawed but strong. I am scared for this country’s future but unwilling to stop fighting for its betterment. I am a lover of wild spaces and a proponent for sharing their grace with others who aren’t as fortunate as me to have experienced it. To have made the smells of dirt and pines and wood fired smoke and morning dew a part of their formative memories. . I want every little brown girl and brown boy, and every girl and every boy – who ever doubted their self worth and sense of belonging in this country – to venture outdoors and explore it with a sense of wonder that comes with this privilege called confidence.  I want everyone to stumble across treasures the way I did in grassy fields, in wooded lands, in snow covered lakes somewhere out there in “real America.” All of America. Out there, in the wild, we form the memories that form us. In the undefined and boundless landscapes of this country, we find our love for a new nationalism. One grounded in humility and gratitude and driven by a desire to share, protect, and diversify.

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Hey Outdoors, this is what diversity looks like! Thank you to all my friends who came out to our Swag Sweater Party (cause it ain’t ugly if you rock it). It was beautiful to put our lives and hardships aside to just smile and laugh with all these Trail Blazers. Each one of the folks in this photo is promoting access and equity in the outdoors in different and fantastic ways. We are blessed 💚 @melaninbasecamp @browngirlsclimb  @tyrhee.moore @prideoutside @gwardc @bleavitt8 @heynomad @misschrisyface @team_blackstar @hmalvs @sierraclub . . . Will you help diversify our public lands? Tag your photos #BrownPeopleCamping

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I was born into a flawed world. I was raised to believe a Good Woman suffers in silence. That feminine helplessness is beautiful. That a righteous woman's life is defined by how she holds strong to the values society expects of her in all situations of hardship. That a woman must not be praised for achieving anything that caused her to betray her feminine duties as a mother, wife, or daughter. . When I moved to the United States, I then became a Person if Color and experienced this thing called racism that  robbed me of my innocence. It instilled a new kind of fear in me and shaped how I viewed the silence and actions of others with distrust. Struggles with prejudice and bias further eroded my abilities to give strangers the benefit of the doubt. I became increasingly saddened by my inability to be a silent Good Woman or an un-angry Person of Color. . There's no happy ending here. There's no softness to this story. There's just me and you and life. But there is always hope. And the pursuit to do better through honesty and using my privilege to learn how to be vulnerable again. . Will you help diversify our public lands? Tag your photos #BrownPeopleCamping

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“An immense land lies about us. Nations migrate within us. The past looms close, as immediate as breath, blood, and scars on a wrist. It, too, lies hidden, obscured, shattered. What I can know of ancestors’ lives or of this land can’t be retrieved like old postcards stored in a desk drawer… To remember is to discover patters in fragments. As an Earth historian I once sought the relics of deep time. To be an honest woman, I must trace other residues of hardness.” – Lauret Savoy, Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape. . They say history is told through the perspective of the winners. And that is a complicated reality in our country because so many communities that live in our nation today lost so much once upon a time, but their losses are not reflected in textbooks or sepia toned “back then” stories. . As I read Lauret’s journey to uncover the untold stories of her African-American ancestors in America’s landscapes and national parklands, I am reminded of my own yearning to understand this thing called America. Every border between our towns and cities and states, every river route, every train track, every inch of this nation – in its civilized spaces and its natural landscapes – bears the finger prints of so many silent witnesses. Native communities devalued, displaced, disenfranchised. Slave labor bought and sold; lineages of resilience that bridged an identity of property to citizen. Generations of immigrants who labored to build a country that when times got tough, turned its back on them and accused them of being enemies and spies and terrorists. So many untold stories lie in the dust of our silent landscapes. We must not accept that silence as a fact. We must share our stories and take the lead of patriots like Lauret Savoy to be audacious in searching for history beyond recorded texts. We must be active participants in shaping the true narrative of our national history. #unitedoutside

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Sometimes, I look at my paystub and get angry at the money that’s being withheld. Taxes; what a thief, I think. I worked hard. I made sacrifices. I got back up time and time again after I was knocked down. I’ve clocked in an out since I was 16 years old. So why am I being punished for earning a dollar? And then I remind myself that I learned to read and write in public schools, I sharpened my skills in public libraries, I found reprieve in public parks, I hustled through life catching public buses and trains that ran on public roads, I got electricity at the flip of a switch and water at the turn of a tap through public utilities, and I’ve lived an objectively safe life due to publicly funded fire and police departments. . I have to remind myself that I can’t just take and take and take, and then throw up my arms when it’s time to pay up. Yes, I am proud of my come up. I am proud my family and I pulled ourselves up from our bootstraps, but I also recognize that those boots and straps were provided to us as publicly funded resources. I work hard and I want to succeed, but I also acknowledge that any success I gain is done so on the backs of publicly funded benefits, resources and infrastructure. So, I completely agree with those who say there’s no such thing as a free ride because I can’t in good conscious achieve my American dream without supporting others’ rights and abilities to do the same. . Will you help diversify our public lands? Tag your photos #BrownPeopleCamping

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Yesterday, we joined our friends at @REI to #OptOutside. We decided to not go shopping on #BlackFriday, and instead, went hiking in Rock Creek Park with our friend Ranger Steve @majgensteveyp. The fact that we could do so speaks to our privilege: the ability to see ourselves in the outdoors even though nobody else on the trails looks like us; the fact that I don’t need to take advantage of sales or work overtime during the holiday seasons; the fact that we live in proximity to public lands and natural spaces and have access to transportation to get us there.  Opting outside for me means giving thanks to all my blessings and privileges that enable me to incorporate the outdoors into my lifestyle.  It also means that I am learning from others and pushing myself to do better and put nature in my life.  If you needed to shop or work on Black Friday, or simply couldn’t head outdoors, that’s ok. Life is complicated and real people have real obstacles to deal with. I will never shame anyone for the choices they have to make. But I will celebrate those who venture outdoors and share natural beauty with themselves and their loved ones. I will celebrate those who push their own boundaries of comfort and strength. I will celebrate the outdoors and those who love it. #sponsored . . Will you help diversify our public lands? Tag your photos #BrownPeopleCamping

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We packed hope into mismatching suitcases and traveled oceans in search of memories we hadn’t yet created. Cashing in yesterdays for golden-tokened tomorrows. Trading in turmeric-stained fingertips and jasmine-scented sunsets for lessons on how to walk flat-footed through snow: soft snow, wet snow, icy snow. For dimensions in cold our equator-ed hearts had never known. Leaving behind the man who came calling with packets of unpasteurized milk for grocery store isles with florescent lights and box top cutout lines. Risking everything for the audacity of living beyond our means. Accumulating debt for the chance to color beyond the lines of caste, class, and customs. . To be hopeful for a new American tomorrow while romanticizing back home yesterdays that never existed. To yearn for two different worlds but live in a third that is truly neither. To love with two hearts that were split apart by a hyphenated identity. Desh, desi, pardesi. This, my friends, is the alchemy of immigration. . Will you help diversify our public lands? Tag your photos #BrownPeopleCamping

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A few weeks ago, I was in the midst of event planning for my first @BrownPeopleCamping meetup event. Pinning my happiness on its success. And then, like a truck I didn't see coming, real life slammed into me hard. I experienced an urgent medical condition that forced me onto bed rest. By some miracle, I was able to join my guests and serve them lunch, but it broke my heart that I couldn't hike with them through beautiful #RockCreekPark with Ranger Steve @majgensteveyp. But life isn't about regrets; it's about working with what you've got. So here's to gratitude for our health and many blessings. Here's to being mindful about the finiteness of our abilities and humble about the impermanence of our existence on this beautiful earth. Here's to second chances. . This #BlackFriday, I will continue my practice of gratitude by joining the #OptOutside campaign led by my friends at @REI. On Black Friday, the only deals I’ll be taking advantage of are friendships with generous friends like Ranger Steve and the joys we'll earn as we hike through Rock Creek Park in autumn bloom. Because I can afford to reject the pull of Black Friday shopping, I will. Instead, I will give thanks to the earth and the many privileges that enable me to enjoy it. I will #OptOutside on our #PublicLands. I hope you do too. #sponsored . Photo Credit: Les Talusan, @lesandoscar www.lestalusan.com . . Will you help diversify our public lands? Tag your photos #BrownPeopleCamping

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Meet my dear friend, Danielle Williams. She’s an active duty US Army Captain, having served 9 years in the military. She grew up in a third generation Army family and built a strong love for the outdoors at a young age. Here’s her story: “My love of the outdoors has always revolved around the Army and family.  I learned to run as a child at West Point. I followed my older sisters around Ft. Leavenworth and spent hours barefoot in the creek catching tadpoles at Ft Stewart. In Izmir, Turkey I learned to swim and in Virginia I ran XC and rowed crew. I joined the Army after college, following the example of both parents, my grandfather, and great grandfather. . “I kept my love for the outdoors even in my service life, finding beauty in the miles of deer populated trails on-post and the firing ranges along Range Road. The heavy thump of rotor blades marking the constant shadow of twin combat aviation brigades overhead felt like home. Then it was off to Iraq and Afghanistan for our trio of siblings. Returning from war drove home the importance of protecting the places we love. There’s nothing more American then defending our public lands and fighting to ensure every American has access to them. On this Veteran’s Day weekend I’m grateful to my family for their legacy of service and for teaching us to value and protect outdoor spaces.” . Danielle is the Founder of @MelaninBasecamp, a social media project aimed at promoting diversity in adventure sports. She has been such a profound source of support and empowerment for me since I started @BrownPeopleCamping. She is light and kindness embodied through strength. She works tirelessly to promote equity in the outdoors, a truly patriotic passion. Please send her some love on this #VeteransDay weekend.

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Meet my friend Rob Vessels, Texas born and raised. He enlisted in the Army after high school and spent 25 months deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq over 5 years as an infantryman with the 10th Mountain Division. As he patrolled the streets of Baghdad, he began struggling with the military’s binary culture of good vs. evil, and ultimately completed his service and returned home. But coming back wasn’t easy either, as he suffered from post-traumatic stress and a lack of purpose. Through help from Army buddies, family, and mental health services, he learned to manage his depression. He chose to continue his passion for service by becoming the leader of the @sierraclub‘s @MilitaryOutdoors, an organization that connects veterans to each other and public lands through outings and leadership opportunities. As they like to say, they’re putting the patriotism back in our public lands. . “In 2016, I canoed with 8 veterans over 100 miles through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I saw the migration of the Porcupine Caribou herd; it is the livelihood of the Gwich’in people, but their existence is threatened by drilling in the refuge. Once back in DC, our group was lucky enough to accompany Gwich’in leaders to Capitol Hill to share their stories with lawmakers. As veterans, we’re able to meet with politicians who are typically hard to access. My experience fighting for the Arctic Refuge exemplified the intersectionality between conservation and social justice, and the role veterans can play in both. Since that trip, I've incorporated civic action on behalf of public lands into each Military Outdoors trip.” . On this #VeteransDay, as we give thanks to those who served and sacrificed, I ask you to support vets like Rob. People who are forever changed by their service. People who suffer from experiences us civilians will never understand. People who bear heavy burdens but keep pushing. For us and our country. For equity and for what’s right. . Please go support Rob at @proberts and @MilitaryOutdoors.

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I have found that being candid about how my diverse life experiences shape my appreciation for the outdoors has allowed me to connect with others who share a similar love for our natural environment and for promoting equal access to it for everyone. So let’s be honest. Let’s share what privileges allow us to venture outdoors: maybe it’s access to paid leave or transportation; maybe it’s the ability to pay for equipment, gear and park fees; maybe it’s having access to cultural resources like friends and family who share outdoor skills and wisdom; or maybe it’s simply the confidence and ability to see yourself in the outdoors. . One of the most common arguments I hear from folks who disagree with my mission to  diversify the outdoors is this: nature doesn’t discriminate so if you’re not outdoors that’s a personal choice and not at all a societal or systemic problem. But the truth is, life is complicated. Not everyone has equal access to the things, people, skills, and confidence that enable us to make the outdoors a lifestyle. So rather than refusing to believe that the lack of diversity is a real problem, let’s start focusing on solutions. We need more folks to connect with and love the land so we can grow our community of people who will stay and fight for its wellbeing in the future. . Will you help diversify our public lands? Tag your photos #BrownPeopleCamping

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Something amazing happened this week. I visited Jackson Hole, Wyoming for the first time for the SHIFTJH conference. Over the last few days, I have met such amazing people of varied backgrounds and passions- hunters, horsemen, climbers, campers, hikers, fishers, bikers, skydivers, runners - but all committed to the conservation and protection of our public lands on which we play and live and love. I’ll be heading home soon to DC with a heart filled with inspiration to work harder and build greater connections to others in this movement, particularly with my friends who are doing the challenging work of promoting outdoors diversity through advocacy and example. I am so blessed to have had to opportunity to share my truth and story here and represent our growing community of @BrownPeopleCamping! . A special thanks to my dear friends for all that they do to increase access and equity on our public lands: @melaninbasecamp @thegreatoutchea @unlikelyhikers @heyflashfoxy @nativesoutdoors @latinooutdoors @greeningyouth @boccrew @nomanslandfilmfestival. . Will you help diversify our public lands? Tag your photos #BrownPeopleCamping

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Who I am is a composite character based on the sum of my memories. Yet, there was a time when Then was Now. When decisions were made, turns were taken, risks were had. There was a time when the most formative memory was real time. Glowing and growing all around me. . There was a crackle of wood-burning fire, and my father feeding it. There was a smell of smoke and spices in the air, and my mother preparing food under the shade of a generous tree. There was my sister laughing. And there was me, watching. Living. Forming. . My immigrant parents, for reasons too many to list, took a chance on camping. They wanted to give us America and so on we went to explore her, with a single tent and a few sleeping bags. We gained wisdom from all the white families around us who didn’t smile at us but gave us just enough space to be their neighbors. I squint at twinkling memories of a formative time and see clearly the moments I lay staring up at the tent ceiling as I fell asleep. A little brown, immigrant girl smiles to herself in a Minnesota campground. Tired from all the newness of the day, she yawns and thinks, I love America. . . Will you help diversify our public lands? Tag your photos #BrownPeopleCamping

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Yesterday, I discovered a new color. A new musical note. A new sensation of warmth. A new definition for friends. Yesterday, at our first meet-up event for @BrownPeopleCamping, I met 30 people who changed my life for the better.  Due to a medical emergency, I couldn’t hike, but I made due with what I had; and what I had were two good hands and a group of friends who won’t quit. So, the show went on. People came from miles away, states away, drove for hours, took trains. People came. And we gathered on a beautiful fall morning in #RockCreekPark where we learned local history from Ranger Steve and we shared what inspires us to keep venturing outdoors. We shared laughter and tears. We shared ourselves. . Since I launched @BrownPeopleCamping over a year ago, I’ve been working so hard to promote diversity in the outdoors through personal storytelling. Yesterday, after meeting everyone at my first meet-up event, I was reminded why I keep doing what I do: promoting diversity requires celebrating it. And that celebration requires hugs and smiles and warm bowls of spiced goodness. It requires us to come together and share authentically with each other what we love and why. . And so, I woke up the next day reenergized. I woke up deliberate and intentional to do more and love harder. I’ve faced many fears by putting on this event and I’ve come out on the other side wanting to do more. So here’s to next time my friends, may it be more diverse and more empowering than the last. May we keep crossing paths and trails and stories. . Thank you to all those who came. #BrownPeopleCamping