Sitting in front of the Yosemite Valley Visitor Center last week, the iconic National Park Service ranger Shelton Johnson and I saw something that stopped our conversation in mid-sentence: a brown-skinned couple. The man wore dreadlocks, but both had their backs turned to us. We couldn’t be certain of what we thought – and, I think, hoped – we saw.
When the couple turned slightly to reach for the door, Johnson exclaimed, “Sighting confirmed.”
It was an African American couple, which was good news for us, and even more so for my friend, Teresa Baker of African American National Parks Experience. She and I were playing a game – I’ll call it People of Color in the Park. It’s competitive, with the score kept according to our racial backgrounds – African American for her, Japanese American for me.
The couple confirmed by Johnson put Teresa ahead, 7-5. However, that evening, I “won” the contest by finding three Japanese Americans on the trail between Vernal Falls and Mirror Lake. I stopped the group and chatted to confirm.
Game, Japanese Americans, 8-7.
“I am hyper-conscious of the fact that, when I look around, I’m constantly asking, ‘Where are my people?’” Johnson said, ruefully. He’s made it his mission to attract more people of color to the parks.
Johnson appears in Ken Burn’s six-part opus, “National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” which is airing on PBS this week. He’s been on the Oprah Winfrey Show, written a book and a play, and appears in media throughout the country. While I was in Yosemite, he was interviewed, with more than a little reverence, by Teresa and Paul Lowe, an African American couple that produces multimedia content about travel.
In other words, Johnson has a megaphone, but his message, even amplified by others around the country, seems to be dissipating, largely unheard, into the wilderness. Much to his dismay, Johnson has come to symbolize the massive disconnect between the park service and communities of color. They not only cannot hear him, most don’t even know who he is. Johnson frequently is stopped in his own park but, during my time there, always by white people and never by nonwhites. He says this is usual.
My main takeaway from last week is that our lands are fraught with well-meaning people, sincere about their desire to diversify the outdoors, but unable to move the needle much. I heard from young activists of color who lamented about their inability to be heard, and listened to members of what you might call “the establishment” complain about their inability to conceive effective outreach efforts. The two groups are not often enough sitting at the same table, which is the crux of the problem.
National Park Week may have illuminated many of this country’s public treasures but it also revealed those, like Shelton Johnson, that will gleam in dark isolation until the effort to diversify our natural spaces resembles more than a chess game played only with the white pieces. What was meant to be a yearlong, feel-good party seems headed instead to serve as a bleak baseline from which the park service, and the entire green sector, needs to progress, quickly and forcefully.
For nine bittersweet days, at least we didn’t have to pay a fee to watch it all fail to unfold.
Glenn Nelson is a contributing editor at High Country News and the founder of The Trail Posse, which documents and encourages diversity and inclusion in the outdoors. Follow him at @trailposse.
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