Mountain Towns Still Don’t Know How to Talk About Racism
We in the outdoor community are so good at pursuing physical discomfort in the mountains but struggle with the emotional discomfort required for essential conversations about hard topics.
As a Black woman with a complicated upbringing, the mountains of northwest Wyoming weren’t an obvious place for me to find a home. My childhood was a short-lived one—I moved roughly 13 times before I was 13, and what I experienced during those years is an example of the disproportionate rates of abuse and risk that Black and brown children bear in this country and around the world. Still, I was lucky. The hand I was dealt held an exit in the form of well-off grandparents who were willing to raise a troubled teenager. They lived in Jackson, Wyoming, and introduced me to my first mountains the Teton Range. It was safe and beautiful there; I didn’t want to be anywhere else. Like the moon interlocked with the tide, the pull of mountain living has drawn me in ever since—I drift off and to the high country I return, no matter the days or distance. The mountains and the iconic communities that rest among them are restorative for me.