I am white (and grew up in a well to do family), and a member of the obnoxious tourist tribe. My first contact was over 40 years ago as a young kid at a two week summer camp somewhere near Petoskey. It involved 6-person semipermanent tents with army cots and resident mice, campfires, rowing and fishing, nature study (stars, birds, trees), and field trips to pick cherries or go to a rocky beach and poke around for fossilized coral.

My last contact was in 1980 or so, when I was invited to stay in my sister-in-law’s family’s “summer cottage on the Lake” for a week, said “cottage” being a decent-sized house with indoor plumbing, water heater, appliances, etc, in a subdivision (!) just outside a mainland town with mansions on a nearby island. Apparently this area was a popular destination for the wealthiest Chicagoans, and one got the impression that they all knew each other and that they were far more interested in socializing with each other than in communing with nature. I was expecting walks in the woods and getting up in the middle of the night to stare at the Milky Way and maybe an aurora (this is a BIG deal for a city-dweller who is lucky to be able to see the Dippers and Orion in the largest urban park), but no-one walked anywhere or sat outside in pitch darkness. Dull. It all seemed a waste of effort to travel up there to do what they could do at home, visit, eat, shop, swim a bit. I can imagine that the permanent residents view the “summer people” as a blight as well as a source of income. And I can’t imagine those “summer people” being very respectful to the permanent residents, let alone any POC. It can only have gotten worse in the last 25+ years.

I think perhaps different people interact with the environment in different ways. Some people want to live in a yurt and listen to the birds; others want to sit on a deck and crank music and drink beer while they watch the sunset; others want to go on a hike; others want to…

To the degree that there are cultural and class differences–which of course there are–then the various groups won’t necessarily like each others’ choices. I don’t like people who listen to music on the beach; i want a quiet beach and the music intrudes on me. They would think I was intruding if I told them to turn it off. And so on.

I don’t think it is ‘respecting’ land to go drive on it in a jeep. but some people do. What are you going to do with that?

gosh maybe I should be a counsellor again.

I think this is the *exact* question we need to be asking–and I think the answer goes back to what cecilia was talking about in her comment–the outdoors, the nature loving, great time, go to the mall sorta thing–it’s all connected, really, to the process that started with colonialism. The outdoors no longer ‘provides’ as in food, living structures, warmth, etc–because earth provides *money*.

Cecilia, I *never* go up north any more. When I was a kid (way back in the 70’s and early 80’s) going up north meant going to a state park with your tent and carrying buckets of water for cooking and sitting for *hours* by a fire on the shore just talking and being quiet and staring at the stars (I used to lay on a picnic table and just stare at stars–at least until the mosquitos got bad and then I’d go back to the fire!)–I went up north one time in the mid 90’s with my best friend–and already that process you talked about–the huge hotels and ritzy houses on the shore and the *stores*–christ the stores–and people sitting in their huge freaking RV’s with their internet and televisions and screens–I can’t go back there. It’s even worse than going to flint for me. the land and the area are all literally being *raped* right in front of our eyes. all for marketing purposes. Why on earth do people think ‘getting away from it all’ and ‘connecting with nature’ means shopping outlets and high end hotels?

It’s like what has happened in New Orleans–New Orleans is marketed to people outside of the state who are rich and can afford to take vacations–while the people *inside* the state are kept at working class poor levels of income keeping the people from outside the state happy–all the while the destruction of land, living space, etc for the people living *in* the state goes on unchecked in the name of progress…

Second, you said:

I know folks from poor families who know how to fish the streams for food and have an acute sense of the weather and the seasons

And that reminded me of an essay I head written years ago (back when I first started at the university of michigan) about the older black male cooks I used to work with in flint–about how part of their survival strategies (cuz we were all making freaking 6$ and hour, ya know?) was to fish out in the flint river–you never saw such excellent fishermen. They *knew* what they were doing, even though they had live their entire lives in inner city flint. But being poor meant not having food on a regular basis unless they were creative, so they’d go hook up a line with a hook and maybe a little meat they “borrowed” from the resturant, and they’d catch these *fish*–amazing fish that they’d bring into work the next day and “borrow” the resturant’s grills to cook up for lunch and take home for dinner.

ANd I remember writing in that essay, even back then before I became more “aware”–how awesome was that? While I was either going hungry or eating can’s of pork and beans that were who the hell knows how old–they were ‘feasting’ so to speak, on what the land had to offer them–for *free*. AND it was sustainable because they needed no boxes or plastic to pack it up in, they created no waste, and one guy said he fed the bones to his dog….

That’s one of the biggest things I’m trying to negotiate right now–something that’s SO important to me…that sense of intimacy, that sense of interconnectedness–I love the outdoors–I love that intimacy–but in many ways it’s SO difficult for me to connect to it, because of working as a migrant worker, because of being a woman and being scared to be out alone in far off places–so many things.

And I look forward to your comments about sherpas. I first learned about them when I watched a documentary on Mt. Everest, and I’ve been reading about them and following them through the climbing seasons ever since. I feel the same connectedness with them that I feel with migrant workers (even tho I’m not any more) –how do we get to touch and sit with that intimacy and interconnectedness–when we’re so busy sweating our asses off and literally even *dying* so that people who are NOT us can achieve a feat?

Anyway, no prob for the link, thanks for taking the time to consider something that a lot of people find no value in considering.

~bfp

I seen the headline for this article and got curious as to who had linked to my blog. Needless to say, I was a little worried about what it might turn out to be.

You surprised me with the intelligent post that asks a very tough question. Nicely done and way to make everyone think. Thanks for linking my article.

Cheers-
Jason A. Hendricks
The Adventurist

Even more, I hope you find your way on this journey you’ve embarked on, to a place where you no longer view nature as the realm of white folks. I view this notion as a very recent modern construct. Sure, white folks have tried to drive POC into urban ghettos and many of us have adapted to that, but this conditioning is shallow compared to our deep connection to nature and it peels away fairly easily. In fact many POC experience nature with an intimacy, immediacy, and inner freedom that many white folks have a hard time accessing, because of our many rich cultural traditions establishing unity of humanity and nature and respect for the Earth; as opposed to humanity’s separation from and dominion over nature, as embodied by “the Fall” from the natural state and ejection from Eden, leaving only abusive colonial conquest as a viable relationship with Mother Earth.

Most of my friends are POC in the tri-state area and we’re almost all “outdoors” people (we don’t really say that but I’m going with your lingo). And I’m not just talking about privileged folks or even middle-class folks. I know folks from poor families who know how to fish the streams for food and have an acute sense of the weather and the seasons; Black folks, Asian folks, indigenous folks, from Harlem, Yonkers, New Haven. Admittedly, when I was a kid I was the only POC in my boy scout troop, but once we got out in the backcountry I became a natural leader because of my feel for and adeptness in nature; it was one of the few places where white kids could actually see an Asian kid as a leader. And that was pretty special.

(I’ll try to talk about Sherpas next time! It’s an important subject to me, as an Asian Buddhist anti-imperialist mountain person.)

So here’s to the outdoors! Not merely as a resource to be mined or a privileged playground, but as the sacred source of who and what we are. Namaste.