I am both excited and ready to hurl at the fact that, as of today, I am a little over 7 weeks out from the start of my hike. June 6th, here we come.
I've been thinking more about how much to blog about the minutia of planning my trip. It's easy to go to obsessive lengths at times looking into options for gear, routes, diet, etc. I have drawn diagrams of different meal combinations I can make on trail with peanuts, noodles, and Knorr sides. I have budgeted and rebudgeted. I have read blogs and watched YouTube videos. I have gotten tired of it all.
This might be the time to stop planning and just let the remaining weeks unfold as they will. I know I will inevitably have to learn as I go and that the Trail will be the ultimate teacher. Then again, did I skim the Trek's website for a new article yet today? Better check just in case.
If you have any interest in hearing about what I'm taking on my trip and what planning I have yet to do (mostly in the form of preparatory hikes called "shakedown" hikes), leave a comment and let me know what you'd be interested in hearing about.
A few important updates for anyone who read my last blog post:
My brilliant partner, Matthew, helped me make the "donate" page on this website. You can now choose to make donations completely anonymously and are required to input only the amount you're donating in the form. You are asked to then go to Outdoor Afro's website to actually put in your billing info, because I didn't want to get involved in handling people's donations directly.
Matthew and I are also looking into creating some extra features to put on this site, including a "whereabouts is Anna walking today" widget and maybe even one to show the weather conditions in that area. Details TBD.
Matthew is also looking into coding a donations tracker so that anyone can check at any given time how close we are to reaching $2,193.
Those are the technical updates. But I have a few other exciting pieces of news to share. For my Honors Capstone project in college, I created a multi-genre writing piece called "Stories of the Appalachian Trail." Honestly, I've never been sold on the title, so if anyone can come up with something better, let me know. I'll credit you if it ever gets published.
This project is near and dear to me, but it's been gathering digital dust in my Google Drive since I finished it, which, to me, is a shame. It did win an award last year, but the award did not come with any publication, so my project is still just sort of in purgatory. I thought that a nice way to tell more of my story would be to record myself reading excerpts from my Capstone in the months leading up to the start of my thru-hike, including small bits at a time in my blog posts. I might also include the text itself so that people can read if they'd rather, or read while listening (comment with your preference). Either way, it's important to me to share this part of myself and something I worked hard on throughout college. Hopefully y'all enjoy it, too, as an added bonus.
As promised in my last post, I also want to provide some resources for learning more about the issue of racism and inequity in the outdoors. These articles, by their very nature, address the topic of intersectionality, which, for anyone not familiar, is a term coined by the brilliant Kimberlé Crenshaw. In an interview with Time magazine, she says:
"Intersectionality is simply about how certain aspects of who you are will increase your access to the good things or your exposure to the bad things in life. Like many other social-justice ideas, it stands because it resonates with people’s lives, but because it resonates with people’s lives, it’s under attack. There’s nothing new about defenders of the status quo criticizing those who are demanding that injustices be addressed. It’s all a crisis over a sense that things might actually have to change for equality to be real."
While you read the articles below, think about how the intersections of the identities these individuals have affected their experiences in the outdoors. I understand all too well what it is like to be a woman in the outdoors, and you will hear more about that from me in the coming weeks and months, but I do not know what it is like to be a woman of color in the outdoors. It is my hope that white folks learn more about what those struggles are like and what we can do to combat them.
If you have feedback for me about how I can make my work more inclusive, or to point out an issue or something that I did/said that was problematic, please tell me! I would like the accountability of those around me so that I can address my own racism and biases. I want to say thank you in advance for taking the time and being brave enough to tell me, if you do so.
Shilletha Curtis's Story:
Rahawa Haile's Story:
Latria Graham's Stories:
To learn more about the issue of white supremacy and racism in outdoor recreation and the outdoor industry:
Listen to the first excerpt from my Capstone project:
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