Join Outdoor Afro in getting excited about the second annual National Kids to Parks Day May 19th, 2012! What a great opportunity to celebrate nature with kids, families, and fellow outdoor people!
Photo By Nkrumiah Frazier
The National Park Trust and our mascot Buddy Bison wants everyone to have an American park experience. We are inviting every family in America to visit a national, state or local park and play outdoors on May 19, 2012! As Buddy Bison says, “Explore outdoors, the parks are yours!”
Last year, nearly 200 mayors coast to coast signed …

Outdoor Afros had a blast last weekend at one of our largest meetups: Hike Angel Island! Hosted by Outdoor Afro  Sela Steiger and led by Cliff Sorrell of Trekking for Life, the route ventured around the South Western part of the island, stopping at different sites of historical and cultural relevance.

Among them was the Chapel of Saint Marie at Camp Reynolds, significant for employing African American chaplain Lt. Colonel Allen Allensworth. An interesting figure in California Military history, Allensworth retired from the Army as the highest ranking African American officer in …

Talk about inspiring – here is a wonderful Get Active Rap Video by New American Media for the East Bay Regional Parks‘s Get Active Youth Contest based in the San Francisco Bay Area to encourage young people to get outdoors!
Contest winners will be featured in the Healthy Parks Healthy People Festival in June, and there are three (3) $500 top prizes and tons of other great prizes.
In this example, we love how youth share in the video what they care about in nature – like tossing a ball, grilling meats, and hanging …

Submitted by Donna Petagrew via Facebook, she writes:
“My son George at the Tooth of Time summit peak (9,000 ft), Philmont Scout Ranch, Philmont New Mexico. This represented a summit in character as he had carried his teammate’s gear in order for both to reach the top together. The outdoors makes men out of boys.” — yes it does!
She won this nifty lamp sponsored by the Coleman Company!
I also have to share with you our very close runner-up (by one vote!), submitted by Cydonie Brown, of a beautiful smiling sister National …

A photo of Edward Barnieh’s sister and mother, 8 months pregnant with him, taken in February 1978 by his dad in an urban park in Bloomsbury, UK. He holds that picture up in the exact same place February 2010.

What memories do you have of your family enjoying nature? What can we imagine of our future in nature?

Get out Saturday to enjoy and support your local public lands.

National Parks are free to enter!

Click to find a location near you!
 

 What is National Public Lands Day?
National Public Lands Day (NPLD) is the nation’s largest, single-day volunteer event for public lands in the United States. In 2011, NPLD will be held on September 24, 2011. Register a site for NPLD or volunteer.
NPLD began in 1994 with three sites and 700 volunteers. It proved to be a huge success and NPLD became a yearly tradition, typically held on the last Saturday in September.  Since the …

Teresa Baker shared on Facebook her time today at the Muir Woods National Monument.
Where were YOU spotted on Sunday in the outdoors?

In collaboration with the East Bay Regional Parks, Urban Tilth, and Richmond Spokes, Outdoor Afro helped to produce today’s “Greenway to Greenway” community bike ride.
 

 
The ride was suited for all ages, and designed for riders to explore the benefits of local “green” transportation corridors that also connect us with nature.

Our group assembled at the train station, where our bikes were checked by cycle wizard Brian Drayton, founder of Richmond Spokes. After a brief intro and safety talk, we cruised 14 miles along the Ohlone and Richmond Greenways.
We stopped along the …

Submitted by Outdoor Afro contributor Reginald James, who reflects nostalgically on a recent swim in a local lake with friends.
A few weekends ago, I went swimming with a group of friends at Lake Anza at Tilden Park in Berkeley for the third year in a row.
The idea for a swim began through a 2009 Twitter conversation with my friend Charles Perkins. As a child in Berkeley public schools, Lake Anza had “childhood nostalgia” for Perkins. He remembered swimming at the lake more than the nearby WIlliard Pool while he was …

Last spring, I helped to organize a local event as part of a national campaign to get people connected to nature. As much as I wanted to share how wonderful the event was, how well attended and rich the experience, until now I was unable to do so because there was a part of the experience that day that pained me, and has since sat like a lump in the back of my throat.

All the time I hear reasons why African-Americans do not engage with the outdoors. From experience, I …