It was on a visit to Zion National Park and the Grand Canyon when Evelynn Escobar noticed it. She was 23, road tripping to a national park for the first time, and realized that among the crowds there was no diversity—no one who looked like her. "I saw nothing but white people," she says, remembering how she clocked the stares. "I'm Black and Indigenous to Guatemala. My ancestors are from just south of there, and yet I'm the one who looked out of place."
After returning home to L.A., Escobar learned she wasn't alone in feeling like an outsider in the outdoors: Nearly 70 percent of today’s outdoor enthusiasts are white, creating what she refers to as the "nature gap," a lack of diversity on trails and in parks, in part because of racial and economic disparities affecting access.
