Exit Interview with a Black, Female Thru-Hiker on the Appalachian Trail

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/exit-interview-i-was-a-black-female-thru-hiker-on-the-appalachian-trail?utm_source=pocket-newtab


Atlas Obscura | Sarah Laskow

This article was originally published on February 1, 2017, by Atlas Obscura

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I should be clear that the trail itself was the kindest and most generous white space imaginable in America. I have nothing but good things to say about the thru-hiking community. It’s incredibly warm. I don’t know if I’ll ever experience something like that again.

Maybe this is a good time ask you about that. You found the hiking community so warm, as you’re saying, but you also posted on Twitter this one picture of you and a couple of other black hikers with a comment about the intense conversation you’d had with them.

That photo I took—there’s a Confederate flag at that hostel. We had just finished talking about how we were spending our money at a hostel that flew a Confederate flag. The men I was talking to, they tried to get hitches into town—you hitch into town to resupply or take a night off—and they’d be hanging out with their friends, three white guys and a black guy. And people would stop and would say, “We’ll take those three, but we won’t let you in our car.”

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People were kind. Some people said, “I don’t see many people of color hiking, and it’s great that you’re hiking, and I hope that’s okay for me to say.” One hostel owner in Virginia was incredible. His name is The Captain, and he came up to me and said, “It’s so good to see a black girl hiking.” He said, “I’ve been doing this for years, and I’ve barely seen any people of color—I demand to see a summit photo when you get to Katahdin.”
[I and most of the Caucasian people I know feel more comfortable in groups and gatherings that are a mixture of people of different shades.]

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The hardest thing, though—holy shit, climate change. People were like, how were your feet? Why don’t you ask me about hiking in the mid-Atlantic during the hottest July ever recorded? Because there was no water. There was no water anywhere. Fewer people would have finished the hike if there hadn’t been trail angels leaving huge caches of water at road crossings. That’s the only way I made it through Pennsylvania. In Maine you’re supposed to get your feet wet and ford a stream every day. I had to ford one stream during my entire time in the state. That is bad. That is absurd. I feel like I walked through one of the most severe droughts the East Coast has ever seen, and no one is talking about that.

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