Recently Outdoor Afro partnered with Bay Area groups, Red, Bike, and Green, and Take Back the Mic Bay Area to form Roots and Grooves, an outdoor experience to inspire new audiences to connect with local outdoor spaces and each other. Our group of about twenty people (including some amazing kids!) camped overnight at Del Valle Regional Park, which is a part of the East Bay Regional Parks System.
Here is one camper’s impression of the trip:

It was a real treat to get away from the city and connect with nature. Kids dug …

Take a peek at this stunning hike in Colorado over the past weekend. Led by the renown Winston Walker, the group hiked 6+ miles in the valley between Bakerville and Loveland Ski Resort, south of I-70 and Clear Creek starting at 9,750 feet on the Bakerville-Loveland trail.
To learn more about Beckwourth Outdoors, and their Colorado area events, visit their website.
Photos courtesy of Tom Craft

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Contributed by Michael David Cobb Bowen, the political & cultural blogger ‘Cobb‘. He brings up the timely topic of youth getting outdoors, through a personal reflection of play as a child in Southern California.
Spence asks a critical question about our trust in society. How far could you roam as a kid. I was surprised to discover that although I felt like I had a virtual infinity by the time I went to high school, before I was 14 years old it was basically one square mile.

This little grid from Google maps …

The Outdoor Afro Family is on vacation this week, practicing what we preach: camping in the mountains!
In the meantime, we hope you are creating some fun summer memories of your own in the outdoors.
Can’t wait to share with you all the details and photos!
Have a great week,
Rue

Rue at 7, circa 1980
Regardless of how patriotic you are, the 4th of July represents family gatherings, fireworks, and great food — all to be experienced outdoors. Growing up, my family spent nearly every 4th of July at our place in Clearlake, California.
Cousins and close family friends would join us for non-stop swimming, hiking, talent shows, and driveway basketball games. Our fathers closely tended the 55-gallon drum that cooked “low and slow” meats seasoned at least two days before. And inside on the kitchen stove, the pressure cooker hissed the readiness …

June 19-20, 2010
New York City
Outdoor Afro had the wonderful experience this past weekend to be a part of Outdoor Nation, a youth summit designed to reconnect America’s youth to the great outdoors and inform organizations of what youth care about most. This was also the first official listening session as a part of Obama’s Great Outdoors Conference this past spring.

The event began with a mixer Friday night sponsored by Backpacker Magazine. Leadership from The North Face, VF Outdoors (TNF parent company), The Natural Leaders Network (Children and Nature Network), New …

I saw this picture and I simply thought: Evocative! The water, the warmth, the smell of fresh green things…happy summer Outdoor Afros. I hope you all get to make memories like this one!

Photo courtesy of Tyson Simmons, who is pictured here with his sister at Colorado Bend State Park.

More and more Outdoor Afros are getting outside as the weather warms up!
Dianne Glave was spotted in Tennessee trying to beat the heat on a hike with a group at the Lucius Burch State Natural Area in Cordova and Germantown, Tennessee about 20 minutes outside Memphis.

On the other side of the country this weekend, Zeon K. was spotted trail running on Old San Pedro Mountain in Montara, CA above Grey Whale Cove!

Each week, post your SOS pictures on facebook, or email them to us to help more people of color …

Photos courtesy of Andrea Juarez

Many participants in the Outdoor Afro community are long-standing members of Beckwourth Outdoors, a Denver-based nonprofit organization that provides year-round outdoor activities for kids and adults and educates the public about the contributions made by people-of-color in the West. The organization was founded in 1993 as the James P. Beckwourth Mountain Club, and now they are commonly known as simply Beckwourth Outdoors.

Winston Walker just sent Outdoor Afro some fun photos from a recent rainy day urban ramble walk with fellow Beckwourth Outdoors members in the Lower …

Looking for something fun to do with friends for Memorial Day, we finally decided to visit the Tilden Park Botanical Garden in Berkeley, California.
Courtesy of the Friends of the Regional Park
A botanic garden is a terrific place to go for an easy refuge from nearby urban spaces, and a chance to visualize the diversity and importance of plants in a natural environment.
Spanning ten acres, the Tilden Park Botanical Garden was designed in the 1940′s as a preservation area, and showcase of California plants including rare and endangered grasses, shrubs, trees, …