Sheltonisms
A ranger at Yosemite National Park for 23 years, Shelton Johnson has a vivid, distinctive way with language β not a surprise given his training and experience as a writer and performer. During my time around him, I started a list of what I started...
JosΓ© GonzΓ‘lez & Latino Outdoors: Tapping into a Passion for Nature
Everyone is jammed into a yellow school bus, chattering with anticipation of a snowshoe outing at Snoqualmie Pass, some 40 minutes outside Seattle. Joe Camacho, an educator and one of the trip leaders, begins an orientation, holding up a pair of gaiters. The coverings are...
Teresa Baker: Diversity One # at a Time
This story appears in the June 27, 2016 print edition of High Country News. Clicking on an image will launch a full-sized viewer. by Glenn Nelson During the past three years, Teresa Baker of Martinez, Calif., has organized some of the most significant events in...
Reconstruction Monument Proposed
The historic Penn Center campus, founded on St. Helena Island, S.C., in 1862 as the Penn School, one of the first schools in the South to educate newly freed slaves, has been proposed to become the countryβs latest national monument, managed by the National Park...
Nomadic Mama with a Mission
by Teresa Baker Christina Benton loves the road. She loves it so much that she took her three home-schooled kids on a 64-day, 5,704 mile RV journey across the country in the middle of the winter. Starting in January in their hometown of Charlotte, N.C.,...
Counting 100 Years of National Parks, for People of Color
When I was 7, or maybe 8, I read a book called The Hundred Penny Box. It told the story of an African-American woman who was 100 years old. She’d put a penny in that box for every year of her life, and whenever she...