Transcript | Ep. 96: How to Take a Hike

[Stinger]

Kenya Jackson-Saulters: If we were to renegotiate our relationship with what it means to be outdoors, I do think that you would see more people of color and more, quote unquote, underrepresented communities accessing, all of this stuff. But it's because the language isn't the language that we speak, it's because we don't see ourselves represented in the campaigns. We don't see ourselves represented in the - in the leadership. So you're always fighting and you don't want to fight to recreate, right? Like, I'll fight at work. That makes sense. I'll fight for a livable wage. I'll fight for my rights. But I'm not I'm not fighting to hike. I'm not fighting to camp.

[Theme music]

Caroline: Cristen..

Cristen: Caroline..

Caroline: Hiking has been on our Unladylike to-podcast list for a while now, and we were originally planning to cover it next season, in the fall, when it’s “hiking season,” aka sweater weather. But even though it’s 4000 degrees outside here in Atlanta, we couldn’t wait any longer to take a hike!

Cristen: Yeah, Caroline, we started this season of Unladylike with our COVID call-in episode, and it feels fitting to end the season on the trail for two main reasons. One: Getting out into nature has been especially important for a lot of us mental health-wise during quarantine. And two: When Christian Cooper’s life was threatened while birdwatching in Central Park in late May, it set off a racial reckoning around who gets to belong in the great outdoors.

Caroline: This episode, we’re exploring that duality of the outdoors — and hiking trails specifically — as sites of both healing AND pain inflicted by white supremacy and everyday racism.

Cristen: Our first guest, Carolyn Finney, is a cultural geographer and the author of Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors. She’s gonna give us the lay of the problematic land and illuminate the connections between Black identity, nature and representation.

Carolyn Finney: Part of the issue around representation is, that in the mainstream, right, whether it's the media, whether it's curriculum in colleges and high schools, whether it's in the books we buy in the nature section, it's who actually - whose stories are we telling? Who are we making space for? The diversity of experience. There's always been Black joy in the outdoors. And part of the problem is that that's not the story. We're often not in the story at all. That's the problem around representation, right?

Caroline: Then, we cross paths with Kenya and Michelle Jackson-Saulters, the founders of Outdoor Journal Tour. It’s a program that combines hiking with journaling and meditation. But Michelle jokes that’s exactly the type of outdoors-ing that hardcore hikers love to drag.

Michelle: Because the outdoors is for baggin' peaks and, you know, hiking all the miles and doing the extreme-est shit that you can do and be alive. It's not for feelings, or a casual walk in the woods. [laughter]

Cristen Michelle is being sarcastic, but she and Kenya are serious about healing power of hitting the trail. So we’re gonna talk to them all about that, and then later, they get real with us about being on the receiving end of the outdoor industry’s recent “awokening” and navigating the tricky terrain of performative activism.

Caroline: All to find out: What happens when Black women take a hike?

[Stinger]

Carolyn: My major passion is talking about land, belonging, identity. Because, you know, without place, how do we exist, really? It tells us a lot about who we are.

Caroline: Carolyn Finney’s passion for studying those connections between identity and geography is rooted in the literal land she grew up on.

Cristen: Her parents had left the Deep South back in the 50’s as part of the Great Migration of Black families seeking safer havens up North. They were hired to take care of a 12-acre estate that belonged to a wealthy Jewish family in Westchester about 30 minutes outside of New York City. This is where Carolyn called home.

Carolyn: It's got a swimming pool and a small pond and vegetable gardens, fruit trees, just a really - woods, it's just a stunning piece of property. And so my parents ended up living here and taking care of that property full time for almost 50 years.

Caroline: The owners only came up on the weekends.

Carolyn: which meant that me and my brothers had run of this place like it was our own private park. So, you know, we all knew how to swim by the time we were 7 years old, because there was water on the property. We were biking. We were out in the woods. We were outside all the time. We played outside. This was the 60s, 70s into the early 80s.

Cristen: Carolyn was surrounded by nature — and white wealth. Hers was the only Black family in town. And that fact was thrown into stark relief when Carolyn was 9. She was walking home from school, backpack slung over her shoulder, when a police officer patrolling the neighborhood stopped her.

Carolyn: And he wanted to know where I was going. And I gave him the address and he looked at me and said, “Oh, do you work there?” And I remember thinking, you know, I'm 9, like, that's some crazy, what? You know, and I said, “No, I live there,” and he let me go, and I went home and told my parents what happened. My father got very angry, called the police station, basically gave 'em hell and said, you know, not to bother me or my brothers again. And they never did. But as an adult, this is a story many of us now have heard over and over and over and over again from Black people around the country getting stopped doing regular activities, sometimes just trying to get into their own house, and, you know, being challenged for being there, especially if it's a beautiful area, considered a beautiful area, a rich area. We're kind of out of place there, and I think about that a lot.

Cristen: In her book Black Faces, White Spaces, Carolyn unearths the history of that out-of-placeness and how racism treats Black Americans like outsiders to the outdoors. For instance, that pristine 12-acre estate is now preserved in a land trust, but there’s no record of those 50 years that her parents spent taking care of it. They were just … erased.

Caroline: But Carolyn’s childhood love of exploring the great outdoors endured. In her 20s, she and her husband embarked on an international backpacking trip as a last ditch effort to save their young marriage.

Carolyn: That's the trip that changed my life. So that backpacking, that hiking up mount - and getting lost on Mount Kenya, that finding ourselves camping on the coast of the Sinai in Israel. Being in Rajasthan in India, like I can just, there were so many moments where, and not every moment was about being outside, but a lot of it was, right, being in these places I had only seen pictures of in books, and suddenly we were there.

Cristen: The marriage didn't work out, but Carolyn had fallen in love with adventure travel — with one exception…

Carolyn: I didn't do backpacking here in the United States. That actually didn't draw me and didn't draw me in part because I'm Black. There's certain places in the United States, like I couldn't imagine in the 80s or 90s that I would go backpacking by myself, I'm just going to say it.

Caroline: Even after five years of backpacking through Africa and Asia and living in Nepal, Carolyn hadn’t entirely shaken her unease about roughing it in America. One specific incident confirmed those initial misgivings.

Cristen: Yeah, it happened when Carolyn was hiking Mount Baker outside Seattle with some white friends. It was a chilly trek, so she was wearing a colorful shawl she'd bought while backpacking in Nepal. When she and her friends reached the mountaintop lodge, Carolyn headed straight for the fireplace.

Carolyn: I was standing there with my backside to the fire, I had the shawl wrapped around me and there was an elderly white woman, I would say at least in her 70s, gray hair, you know, and she'd been staring at me what I thought was pretty hard, not unfriendly, but just staring. And then she jumped. And I think what happened was, well how I took it, because I moved, you know, I moved and she jumped. And then she wandered over to me, and I remember thinking to myself, like, OK, what's happening right now? What's she going to say? And she said, "My dear, you look like a beautiful Indian statue." And it was, the thing that I'd say to people was, no, she didn't threaten me, she didn't challenge my right to be there. What she did do, and for me, what did happen in part was that she didn't think I was real. And she thought I was Indian. And for me, that's what it was both funny, there was a compliment embedded in that, but she also didn't think I was real.

Caroline: Carolyn wondered, has this person ever seen a Black person hiking? Has she ever seen a picture or heard a story of someone who looked like Carolyn in a similar setting?

Carolyn: It is interesting how many of us, our bodies become opportunities for people to learn. You know, it's not always that you're being called the N-word. It's not always, you know, the kind of violence that people recognize it in your face. A lot of the time, it's a it's a different kind of violence.

Cristen: On nature paths and trails, that kind of violence and othering is known as “hiking while Black.”

Carolyn: It can be exhausting. It can just be exhausting sometimes to know that, you know, we may enter a space, particularly if we're the only one. And that includes an outdoor space. Outdoor spaces are not immune. They're not separate just because they're beautiful and because they're outdoors. Actually, what I always say is, they're foundational to understanding this relationship here because, one, no matter how far down the road we get, all this land was stolen. We stole it from the original people, and in many instances, we killed those people in order to get this land, and two, we enslaved another group of people to work that land for free in order to build the backbone of our economy. These are hard things to say, but that will never not be true.

Cristen: White supremacy is DEEPLY embedded in the history of the American outdoors. Take Yellowstone — the world’s first national park, established in 1872. To create it, the US Army and park superintendents drove out more than two dozen indigenous tribes who either inhabited or traveled through the land.

Caroline: Meanwhile, the history of state parks is steeped in segregation. Leading up to WWII, Southern states built 150 parks — most of them were whites-only. When states DID provide parks for Black Americans, they were usually smaller, unkempt and way more remote than those built for whites.

Cristen: In the 1950s and 60s, racist park policies were SO blatant in fact that the NAACP described them as the legal "Achilles heel" of the Jim Crow system — in other words, they could take aim at segregation by suing over those racist recreational facilities.

Caroline: And it paid off — federal courts ordered states to desegregate their parks … but many Southern states resisted. In 1963, for just one example, rather than allow Black people to freely enjoy public parks and beaches, the state of South Carolina SHUT THEM DOWN for the next three years until they were forced to integrate.

Cristen: But formally desegregating public parks didn’t magically make them welcoming destinations. Even today, Black Americans make up less than 2 percent of all visitors to national parks, forests and wildlife refuges. That’s partly attributed to cultural stereotypes of hiking and camping as “white things.” Plus, systemic inequalities around affordability, lack of transportation and safety concerns are major deterrents.

Caroline: Carolyn Finney also points to the whitewashing of outdoor media. When she reviewed a decade’s worth of Outside magazine issues, for instance, she found that just 2 percent of all the images inside featured Black people.

Carolyn: It's not that Black people don't have joy by ourselves because of ourselves in the outdoors. Outdoor Afro is an organization started by Rue Mapp, one of the great things about that organization, one of the many great things about that organization is the focus is not on diversifying the outdoors. The focus is on uplifting Black joy in the outdoors. Not everybody, not every Black person, Black organization is all about working with white organizations to talk about diversity. Many of them want to just uplift that Black joy that's always been there, right. So, it’s not one or the other

Cristen: In prepping for this interview with you, I started thinking about Cheryl Strayed's book, Wild, and that moment when it was like white ladies hiking to find themselves just like, became a thing. And I was just curious what, what you thought about that moment.

Carolyn: Yeah.

Cristen: If you even paid attention to it at all.

Carolyn: Yes, I did, and I've actually had a chance to meet Cheryl Strayed as well, so I want to be transparent about that. So, when I was doing all that backpacking by myself, so between sort of 1987 and 1994, that was the period of time when I would come back home, earn money and doing all of that, all that I was reading were travel adventure books. I would have loved to have had her book then. I read everything I'd be in New York, in Manhattan, on every bookstore going to that section. There's nothing wrong for me with Cheryl Strayed, Wild and white women feeling they want to have their experience. I'm willing to bet that it isn't only white women that were moved by Cheryl Strayed's book, because I was moved by books written by other white women when I was younger doing all that, because that's all I could find. But that doesn't mean I didn't know how to connect across that and find my own inspiration because of their words. The challenge for me is that, is there space for me to tell my story or someone who looks like me in the same way to get the same kind of promotion and that same kind of platform to show up?

Cristen: We’re going to take a break. When we come back, we talk to Kenya and Michelle of Outdoor Journal Tour, who are creating space for women who look like them to get in touch with their own stories and shout them from the mountaintops — literally!

Caroline: Don’t trail off!

[Midroll ad 1]

Cristen: We’re back. Before we left off, Carolyn Finney mentioned Outdoor Afro. It's one of a number of groups and events including Black Girls Trekkin and Black Birders Week — led by Black women to reclaim the great outdoors for recreation AND self-care.

Caroline: Which brings us to our next guests, the delightful founders of the Outdoor Journal Tour.

Cristen: A few years ago, married couple and fellow Atlantans Kenya and Michelle Jackson-Saulters founded the Outdoor Journal Tour, or ODJT. They take groups of women on hikes and lead them through introspective journaling and mindfulness meditations. The goal is to provide a safe space outdoors for women to heal and just be together.

Caroline: The idea emerged out of Kenya’s own efforts to work on her mental health.

Kenya: Around 2016, I was dealing with some pretty heavy, like, anxiety and depression. Michelle and I had recently gotten married and we had bought a home, and, like, we were in this space where everything should have felt great. And it just didn’t, you know.

Cristen: To get out of her funk, Kenya decided to go for a hike and do some meditating with Michelle and a friend of theirs.

Caroline: Now here in Atlanta, you don’t have to go far to get into nature, but more often than not, that nature is entwined with the legacy of slavery, racism and the Civil War. So Stone Mountain for instance, is known as the birthplace of the modern KKK. And etched into the side of it is the largest Confederate memorial in the South.

Cristen: But! Stone Mountain also has miles of beautiful trails, which is why Kenya headed there.

Kenya: So I'm gonna go and hike this mountain and take three or four people with me, and we're going to go up, and I created like this really short activity. Now I think about this whole activity plan, but it was very short and there was a meditation with it as well. And so we go up there with the three of us and we close our eyes, do a meditation, and when we open our eyes… OK Michelle go. OK Michelle go.

Michelle: Is that my cue? Like, I wasn't ready, no, OK, so when we opened our eyes, there were two women that had joined us that we didn't know. And it was kind of weird because we don't know you. Why are you sitting with us? You know, it's just strange right? But, they were really friendly, and were just like, you know, we want to join this program. It looks so - it looks so amazing. They were both Black women as well. And they pretty much were like, we don't see other Black women, you know, outside doing this sort of thing. We really would like to be a part of this program, and Kenya I are kind of looking at each other like what program? Because this isn’t a program. This is just us hanging out outside. But, you know, I just was thinking I was like, no, it totally is and could be a program.

Cristen: It was a hiking meet-cute. Kenya and Michelle decided to create an official program, and within a few months, they held their first Outdoor Journal Tour event.

Caroline: And just like during the first outing, their group attracted the attention of another hiker passing by.

Michelle: And we had a pretty good sized group and it was this woman and she had like two or three kids with her. And she started talking and, like, about her mom I think, it just was completely started crying, and this whole thing, and it's like, OK, this is definitely a thing, like we need to do more of this. Like we need to create a space where women can be seen and heard and have an opportunity to just, you know, get whatever that is off their chest.

Cristen: So, walk us through a typical group excursion and sort of what the goal is for you two kind of going into it.

Kenya: So we have a really simple, simple goal. Our goal is always to create sacred space. Women really need that. And so, our goal is always is to help people feel safe and seen and connected because of our particular demographic, you know, we're women of color, we live in Atlanta, we live in the city of Atlanta. We are city girls, you know. And, because of that, we get people that normally don't have a hiking background or an outdoor activity background. So a secondary or tertiary goal is sometimes exposure, you know, like, hey, did you know this park was 30 minutes away from your house? Did you know, this park was 45 minutes away from your house? Did you know that you could, you know, get quiet and you would be able to, like, you know, connect with yourself? Did you know that you could journal and feel better? Did you know that meditation could make you calm down? Like that - that's also a goal, but our primary goal was always just allowing women to come someplace and be seen and heard and safe.

Cristen: Kenya and Michelle recognized the power of combining hiking, journaling and meditation as part of their mental health care — and as a way to help break down barriers.

Kenya: Number one, there's a huge stigma for mental health care, especially in communities of color. Number two, there's lots of situational mental health concerns that women are dealing with, things like break ups, things like transition to motherhood, transition into marriage, new jobs, job loss, that kind of thing that can cause like anxiety and depression that may not need to be treated by, like a psychologist or - or medication, but just - just kind of like that fog that you get in your head because something new is happening or something old is ending. And I wanted to create like a lower barrier to entry for, like, formalized mental health care and not like a substitute, like not at all, because I take meds every day and I - and Michelle, you know, is in therapy and I'm looking for a therapist, so we're definitely advocates of that. But we wanted women just to feel like they could get a breath. And when we started doing research, we realized that meditation, journaling and exposure to, like, direct sunlight, vitamin D, which is between the hours usually of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., were the top three things that were recommended by a psychologist of what to do to kind of take care of yourself and, you know, self care.

Caroline: On a typical hike, Kenya and Michelle start with an icebreaker: Say your name and your superpower. Then, Kenya leads a guided meditation, sometimes prepared, and sometimes a flow she comes up with in the moment.

Kenya: Being able to meditate with them and offer some form of almost like prayer on their behalf really feels like a privilege. You know, all of it feels like a privilege, to be honest.The things that the women disclose to us when we're outside, you know, the things that they, you know, uncover, the catharsis, the release. I always feel like so, like, honored, like, wow, like, you know, you know, you shared this with us. You shared this with me. You shared this with these women, and I got a chance to witness that.

Cristen: Are there any examples you can share sort of those breakthrough, breakthrough moments that have happened happened on a hike?

Kenya: One of our hikers who's been with us for quite a while, about a year or so ago, talked about a molestation that she had had by a family member, an uncle. And she shared that with us on top of a mountain, you know, and there were, you know, probably 100 women out there. And she kind of released that to us and let us know that she was healing from that. And this is an older woman, you know, so she's been kind of holding and carrying this for, I would probably say 40 years or more. And it was very cathartic for her to speak about it and to talk about what that meant for her, and just to be able to say, like I'm a survivor of this experience and this happened to me. And also naming that it was an uncle, naming that it was a family member, which I thought was really huge. Another woman said that she had been dishonest in her journaling, like she would journal and would lie about her feelings in her journal because she was worried that when she passed on, her kids would see her journal and realize how sad she was, and she didn't want them to know how she was really feeling. And, you know, through that conversation, we kind of encouraged her to like, girl, at least be honest in your journal, like, you - if you want to put on a smiling face for your kids, we get it, but like, can you least, like, push yourself to be honest in your journal, you know, because that's your space with you and you need someplace to be authentic.

Cristen: Do you think there's something about the setting of being outdoors in nature on a mountaintop that kind of facilitates that catharsis?

Michelle: Absolutely. Absolutely. 100 percent. And, you know, it's part of the reason why we do that model — hike, journal, meditate — is because as we're hiking, you know, there is a physical release that happens and there's a physical exhaustion that happens, too. And when you are physically exerting yourself, you don't have that same filter up emotionally and maybe are a little bit more open to putting words to things or even just receiving, just being more open in general and just feeling like you are a part of a much bigger whole, you know, being in a place that's - that's beautiful and maybe some place that you've never seen before or someplace you never thought you would go before, and to be there with other women and having similar experiences, there is a safety in that, there is a belonging and that is maybe a better word. And it just really allows for people to have a higher level of freedom.

Caroline: We’re going to take a quick break. When we come back, Kenya and Michelle keep claiming their space in the midst of an outdoor industry grappling with its own race problems.

Cristen: Stick around

[Midroll ad 2]

Caroline: We’re back with Kenya and Michelle Jackson-Saulters of Outdoor Journal Tour. When they initially started ODJT, they wanted to provide access to safe spaces for all women. They didn’t really emphasize their own black, queer identities.

Cristen: Then this spring, the Black Lives Matter protests spread across the globe — and across the outdoors industry.

Kenya: What was very important for us during the time of the racial unrest was to be very clear that we do identify as Black women. The experience that we have is a Black woman's experience, even within an outdoor industry. And so it was important for us to say, like, don't get it twisted. We're Black women and we live a Black experience, and we want it to center, you know, Black women's experiences in all these industries that people don't even think about where the racism is in mental health, where it is in the outdoor industry, where it is in running or fitness or all these different things, the microaggression that we're constantly dealing with and overcoming to bring this service to the world and to bring this service to a larger community, like, we navigate all those spaces as Black women.

Caroline: During the last week of June this year, Kenya and Michelle organized a weeklong digital event called We Hike to Heal: Focus on Black Healing. They featured daily stories from Outdoor Journal Tour members that included a set of journaling prompts, a guided meditation AND encouragement to get outside.

Michelle: With everything that was happening in the - in the country, with the racial unrest and just all the injustices that were happening. Everything was very heightened .So we wanted to have a week dedicated specifically to honoring Black healing. And it was really about sharing stories of Black women in our community, in the different industries that they work, sharing their stories and then having conversations around what that looks like as far as how racism shows up in in their particular experiences, what that feels like, what that looks like.

Cristen: As Black women in the outdoors industry, what it looked like for them was a rush of attention — and a lot of emotional labor.

Caroline: Yeah, so major environmental groups like The Sierra Club formally disavowed their racist figurehead, John Muir, and the Outdoor Industry Association publicly acknowledged its own role in perpetuating systemic racism. The reckoning also prompted outdoorsy brands to suddenly beat down Kenya and Michelle’s doors to feature them on their social media.

Cristen: There's been a lot of conversation lately about performative activism. And I'm just wondering what - what y'all have noticed around that, like, in the realm of the outdoors industry or even just outdoor culture.

Michelle: Oh, man, that is a loaded question. You know honestly, it has been - it has been tough. Personally, I have had a lot of realizations. And what I mean, you know, kind of these real personal realizations I've had, is that I have absolutely shown up as the safe Black person in these spaces. And I don't know that I know that I was doing that consciously, I think that it was just a coping mechanism. Like I said, I've worked in corporate America since I graduated from college. I'm used to being in predominantly white, male driven spaces. And you just learn to learn how to show up. Learn what works and what doesn't, and so when all of this was happening, I had that just really just just ugly realization that I was showing up in that way. And I was incredibly overwhelmed, incredibly enraged. Just I almost felt like I, you know, shot to the opposite end of the spectrum, like, fuck all of this. I'm not doing it anymore. I'm not being polite, there's no more sugar-coating, I'm just going to do and say exactly what I want to do, let's say. And of course, I try to adapt and figure out who I want - you know, what I'm showing up as. But when it came to our sponsorships, I just I realized that it is all performative, all of it is.

Cristen: So for example, Kenya and Michelle had been trying to get featured on REI’s social media — for years

Michelle: And it just never seemed to work out, there was always, you know, some reason as to why it couldn't or didn't work out. And all of a sudden, especially after the murder of George Floyd, they've got extra money in their budget and they want us to talk to the social media people because they want to highlight us. And I mean, yes, we appreciate that, you know, let's be honest, We still live and work in a capitalistic society, and they have a huge platform. But the idea that we are now, you know, appropriate for your social media is infuriating.

Caroline: Other companies — like the footwear brand Merrell, who Kenya and Michelle say they mostly love to work with — still don't know how to manage racism when it manifests in their own social media backyards.

Michelle: For example, when there's a post about us or one of the other Black ambassadors there's a lot of backlash, a lot of trolls that come out and have the nastiest shit to say, and quite honestly they still haven't figured out how to respond to that, their go-to is to either delete the comments or not respond at all. And neither one of those things feel right, you know, I like, you know, like if you're going to stand for us, if you are standing for justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, then these are the moments when you have to be uncomfortable as well, and you have to make those statements and stand behind them and not just put it out there and, you know, then duck as the shit starts to fly. It doesn't come off well. It just comes off as you're being tokenized.

Caroline: I’m curious. Do you feel like the centering of white people’s stories and imagery about the outdoors bolsters some of this racist Internet hate that y'all are receiving?

Michelle: Absolutely. it is absolutely all related. The fact that somebody would comment on a post, and the caption could be, having fun outdoors, whatever. Something very simple. There will still be someone saying, I am so sick of this Black propaganda, blah, blah, blah. And it's just like the privilege that exists to where you think that you - your comment A, matters or B, is even appropriate. like, so dismissive because it doesn't fit into what they believe is the outdoor industry. And the fact that anyone would drop in what they're calling politics into this mix is inappropriate. But it's only politics because it doesn't affect you on a daily basis, right? Because for me, it's surely not politics. It's my daily life.

Cristen: You know, we're talking about all of all the things sort of happening in - in the industry in this moment of racial unrest. But I also wanted to ask about just the very spaces that the hiking, you know, your hiking has taken place. You know, the first unofficial event that you all had took place on Stone Mountain, which is, of course, a giant Confederate monument, and a lot of the activism has been now focused around monuments and the iconography of these public spaces. And I was wondering how how that intersects with the healing process that you all are facilitating.

Michelle: Oh, welcome to the South. There are not very many places that you can go that do not have that history.

Kenya: Right.

Michelle: It's a part of living in the South and I for me, having a hundred mostly Black women, I would say 80 percent Black women on that mountain, for me, it's taking that space back. It's showing up and saying, you know, we belong here just as much as anyone else. And, you know, we'll use this space in a way that benefits us.

Kenya: Definitely. And as people of color and nature lovers, we are not going to just go someplace else, like... no, we're not going to divest, we're not going to stop going to Stone Mountain, we're not going to stop going to these places because my ancestors literally died on this land. They died to be on this land. And so it is my birthright to be here. And we are reclaiming this land in the spirit of the people who lost their lives on it.because this is a part of the reason why we do what we do, the way we do it and where we do it. We're always thinking about that, because it's important to us to kind of make that statement to Georgia and to every everyone else that gets the chance to come with us.

Caroline: Fuck, yeah, Kenya.

Cristen: OK unladies … what are your thoughts on taking a hike? Have you been enjoying the Great Outdoors during the pandemic? Tell us your thoughts! You can email us at hello@unladylike.co, find us on social @unladylikemedia or join our private facebook group and jump into the thread for this episode.

Caroline: If you want to learn more about Kenya & Michelle’s Outdoor Journal Tour, you can follow them @outdoorjournaltour on Instagram. To dig into more with Carolyn Finney and find her book Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors head over to carolynfinney.com

Cristen: Visit unladylike.co to find this episode’s sources and transcript. While you’re there, sign up for our newsletter, stop by our shop AND if you want to binge some delightful bonus episodes on the Babysitters Club, lady-only-apartments and the true crime case of the Career Girl Murders (!!), head over to patreon.com/unladylikemedia.

Caroline: Nora Ritchie is the senior producer of Unladylike. Gianna Palmer is our story editor. Shruti Marathe transcribes our tape. Our music is by Flamingo Shadow, Amit May Cohen and Sarah Tudzin. Mixing is by Andi Kristins. Sound design and additional music is by Casey Holford. Executive producers are Chris Bannon, Daisy Rosario and Unladylike Media.

Cristen: This podcast was created by your hosts, Cristen Conger

Caroline: And Caroline Ervin of Unladylike Media.

Cristen: We’re heading out for a summer break, but have no fear: We’ll be back in September with a brand new slate of episodes for your ears. You won’t want to it! Make sure you’re subscribed to Unladylike. Find us in stitcher, spotify, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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