00;00;15;18 - 00;01;03;17
Stefan Van Norden
Welcome to Nature Revisited, the podcast. Thank you for joining me. My name is Stefan Van Norden. And on this episode we are featuring Rue Map and Outdoor Afro. Rue Map is a designer and collaborator, entrepreneur and author. Rue founded the organization Outdoor Afro in 2009 as a place where black people and nature meet. She is also the author of the book Nature Swagger - Stories and Visions of Black Joy in the Outdoors.
00;01;03;19 - 00;01;25;08
Stefan Van Norden
Rue joins me from her home in the Bay Area to talk about her amazing journey and why it is important that we share our experiences in relationship with nature with others.
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Stefan Van Norden
So, Rue, thank you so much for joining me on Nature Revisited today. I have been looking forward to learning more about you and Outdoor Afro, the organization you started and your book, Nature Swagger. Let's start in Oakland, California, which is the childhood home of Jack London. I believe you were raised there and that you still live there. Is that where you first heard your call of the wild?
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Rue Mapp
Oh, that's a beautiful metaphor. The respect and historical legacy of Jack London is deeply felt throughout Oakland and memorialized at Jack London Square, where I spent many of my formative years and adult years with family and friends enjoying that waterfront area. And yes, I did live in Oakland all my young adulthood from the time I was born until I was 18.
00;02;29;29 - 00;02;57;01
Rue Mapp
I moved all around the Bay Area and Overland is now in the North Bay. I just really appreciate the legacy left in me of what Oakland's all about is diversity of people, of landscapes, and just how it was easy to immerse myself in so many different types of culture cultures as well as nature experiences.
00;02;57;04 - 00;03;01;23
Stefan Van Norden
So how important was nature to you growing up?
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Rue Mapp
I would say that in these times we live in now, like nature is a call out, something that I feel is more of an intentional pursuit, given that I grew up in the seventies and eighties. We were outside playing all the time, so being outside, exploring our natural surroundings, we had this really cool, undeveloped area that we called the dead end in our neighborhood.
00;03;29;27 - 00;03;55;18
Rue Mapp
It was full of all kinds of mystery and adventure and creativity. We built tree houses. We formed walking paths. We were able to oversee a regional park that had horse trails, and we're able to see those horses. We were able to see deer and other wildlife. This area in particular where I lived in the Oakland Hills, it was this really beautiful intersection between urban and wild.
00;03;55;22 - 00;04;23;13
Rue Mapp
And I think that's something people don't recognize about Oakland when they imagine what it is in their imaginations. We think about an urban place. Oakland has such an incredible amount of wild spaces and natural landscapes that are just minutes away from where most people live. And I was fortunate to live in an area that was heavily wooded, not as developed or dense.
00;04;23;13 - 00;04;32;08
Rue Mapp
And so the connection to being in nature was as simple as going outside to play with my friends.
00;04;32;10 - 00;04;36;08
Stefan Van Norden
And what were some of the other activities you participated in?
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Rue Mapp
So my mom was a seamstress and she had a sewing room that was from floor to ceiling on three sides of fabrics and notions. Notions meaning like buttons and all the zippers and all the things you need to really finish a garment. And she had an ironing board that was permanently up and installed and a sewing table and sewing machine.
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Rue Mapp
And it was almost like walking into a fabric store. And she was there day in and day out, making clothing for people in the community, very much involved with the church and was president of the sewing circle there. And I just took a natural interest in it because as a child, she was there during the day when I would come home from school, she made her sewing.
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Rue Mapp
So it was really easy to pick up having so many materials at my disposal to experiment with. And the very first thing that I made on my own was a life sized doll. Seven years old was the first time that I actually was trusted to get on the machine. And so something by machine. And it was a life sized doll.
00;05;44;20 - 00;06;09;08
Rue Mapp
Just a couple years after that, going into the fifth grade, I was able to make the majority of my school clothes. Later in high school, I was making my prom dresses and even helping make prom dresses for others. And it evolved from there with getting more involved with the fashion and design community and then also at the same time, you know, I really love cooking.
00;06;09;08 - 00;06;39;26
Rue Mapp
And and so it was a really good time to not only be creative, but also convert that creative spirit into something that was really useful in my life around the time I was learning to sew and hands on with life, I started a journal in a little Hello Kitty diary. It was a natural to really start chronicling my experiences, and particularly my experiences in nature.
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Stefan Van Norden
So what did you see? And maybe you still do see that made you want to encourage more people, particularly the African-American community, to spend more time in nature?
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Rue Mapp
I think it would be very important to remind people that in addition to my time in Oakland as a child in nature, we had a family ranch about about 100 miles north of Oakland, and that's where I was able to go deeper in my nature experiences with being on a hobby ranch where we had cows and pigs and a nearby creek.
00;07;13;02 - 00;07;54;23
Rue Mapp
We would invite tons of family over for holidays and other milestone opportunities. There would just be this immersion of community nature and wonder and exploration that brought me this comfort. I sought to recreate or be a part of experiences like that through the girl Scouts, later through becoming an Outward Bound student. I found that once I got away from the city and away from the people who I already knew, that there was a whole world of folks out there who were not engaged, as maybe they had once been, maybe a couple of generations ago.
00;07;54;25 - 00;08;12;26
Rue Mapp
And were missing out. They were missing out on all of this beauty, all of this connection, all of this sense of belonging to something bigger. I wanted to foster the opportunity for that to happen for more people, and particularly for the black community.
00;08;12;29 - 00;08;17;05
Stefan Van Norden
So when did you first get the idea for Outdoor Afro?
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Rue Mapp
I got the idea for outdoor Afro, like really in a moment of revelation. I was at this milestone moment where I completed a long neglected undergraduate degree. I had three young children who I was raising at the same time as as a divorced mother was thinking about, like, what is it that I really want to do next? And I had a mentor just say, you know, with time and money, we're not an issue.
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Rue Mapp
What would you do? And, you know, there's just like that one question that became the spark that lit up everything that I had been doing and practicing in plain sight that I felt was true and needed to be amplified in my life in a real way. And I just flippantly said, Well, I'd probably start a website to reconnect more black people to the outdoors.
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Rue Mapp
After that, it was this clear focus, like this navigational north. Within two weeks I picked up a Google template and you could just grab one and start writing. And I was off to the races writing about my experience growing up in the outdoors, making connections with others, what it meant to me, and what the vision I had for more people to have those experiences.
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Rue Mapp
The momentum around that conversation in 2009 that was really at the dawn of social media was fairly cutting edge, was reflecting back to people the narrative that they weren't seeing or hearing about and that was a vision of black people in the outdoors as strong, beautiful and free magazines that highlighted outdoor experiences at that time and before really weren't telling the story of black people as active participants with agency in those stories.
00;10;13;06 - 00;10;22;02
Rue Mapp
And I knew from my experience growing up that there was just a whole chunk of that American story that was missing.
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Stefan Van Norden
So you very kind of formulated it. But what what is the mission?
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Rue Mapp
The mission of Outdoor Afro is to celebrate and inspire black connections and leadership in the outdoors. And what I mean by celebrate and inspire it, it really is about acknowledge seeing what's already there. And then connection refers back to the relationships that I know are fostered and leadership refers to not just structured leadership that you might find in an outdoor recreation program, although that is one part of what outdoor Afro grew into.
00;11;04;15 - 00;11;32;07
Rue Mapp
Being able to develop is also about the leadership in the outdoors of everyday people and restoring that sense of leadership and confidence. My role models and the people who influenced me the most, my pursuits in the outdoors, they were people who were right in my own family. It was it was my parents. It was the uncles and aunties and people in my sphere of influence.
00;11;32;10 - 00;11;52;27
Rue Mapp
For me, it's been about like, Hey, let's remember who we are. Let's remember that anybody can be a leader in the outdoors. We all have people in our lives, no matter what your hue, who you can influence to get connected to the outdoors. Outdoor experiences are the kind of thing that you don't need to be an expert to bring someone along.
00;11;52;29 - 00;12;13;08
Rue Mapp
If you just know a little bit more, you can bring someone along with you with that little bit more of knowledge and so kind of help more people see their own agency and opportunity to get more people connected to something that helps them to care more for others as well as care for our planet.
00;12;13;10 - 00;12;21;09
Stefan Van Norden
So what are some of the programs that you have and the ways that those programs are fulfilling your mission?
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Rue Mapp
Outdoor Afro began, and I believe continues to be this kind of song of my heart, a song of my own journey of becoming. I have been thankful to be able to share that opportunity with more people who have had similar experiences. The stories are long of people who have found communities or other people friendships that they may not have had before.
00;12;51;00 - 00;13;15;22
Rue Mapp
That has really been a joy to see happen just naturally, because nature allows us the space to do that. And then the other piece is the programmatic expression of outdoor afro that began really as a start up exploration of how I could take all the things that I was learning about getting people into the outdoors and share that model with others.
00;13;15;22 - 00;13;47;17
Rue Mapp
And in 2012 to 2013, I pulled together like about a dozen people and I was like, Hey, let's make an outdoor Afro leadership team. Let me share with you everything that I've learned, and then you take that learning back to your communities and help more people in your community get into the outdoors so they're able to help not only amplify the mission, but also be catalysts for the kind of connection and learning that has always been at the heart of outdoor afro.
00;13;47;24 - 00;14;18;05
Rue Mapp
And then on top of that, in 2019, we decided because we heard many, many stories, that black children were drowning at seven times the rate of white children in the same age group. This is not only a public health crisis. We had this generational loss of knowing how to swim that has persisted and has given way to these really alarming statistics.
00;14;18;08 - 00;14;43;24
Rue Mapp
The other important piece is, is that if people don't know how to swim. That really cut you off from a whole bunch of opportunities to be connected to water. You're not going to ease into a tippy kayak. You're not going to put a pole in a lake and you're not going to care about plastic in the ocean. If your relationship with water is one that is filled with fear or even terror.
00;14;43;27 - 00;15;08;13
Rue Mapp
And so we decided back in 2019 that we were going to teach every child in our sphere of influence how to swim what I call babies in the water so that we can usher in a new generation of possibility to learn how to not only swim, but to also save lives and care for our planet in ways that I feel we all should have the opportunity to do.
00;15;08;16 - 00;15;17;16
Stefan Van Norden
So would you like to share any of the other programs? I look in your website, you have an amazing amount of programs and things going on.
00;15;17;18 - 00;16;06;00
Rue Mapp
From 2009 to 2012, I wrote probably 300 blogs that were all about the new narrative. And one of the things that has been clear to me is that we're not just about the transactional program. We're about changing the narrative. And in order to do that is a combination of, you know, amplifying those stories that we support through our funding, but also finding those stories in the community that we can elevate and shine a bright light on given that we have the platform to be able to do that because a lot of outdoor experiences have been happening for a long time, but people haven't either known about them or they haven't been happening at scale.
00;16;06;02 - 00;16;36;15
Rue Mapp
And so we've been able to grow into this dual purpose of curating opportunities that we amplify, but also identifying things that have been happening historically that people might not have known about. One of the most exciting things that I'm happy to share all the time is about the ways that black people were really deliberate and persistent throughout history to find ways to connect with nature.
00;16;36;18 - 00;17;08;03
Rue Mapp
There were places in the face of Jim Crow and exclusion from being able to access parks and public lands, that there were black people who banded together their resources and built places like the Lincoln Hills and Colorado, which was a lodge that allowed people to rest and recreate. There were places like Lake Ivanhoe and Oak Bluffs and Martha's Vineyard, which is still a very popular destination for the black community.
00;17;08;05 - 00;17;30;26
Rue Mapp
And these are places where working class people were going to recreate. So I feel that it's important that people know that one out are accurate. Did not invent black people in the outdoors, that it's been happening, that there's been, in spite of the interruptions in our history in the United States, people still valued it enough to pursue it and invest in it.
00;17;30;29 - 00;18;00;03
Rue Mapp
And it really opens the door for the possibilities we can have for our future. So it is that can do spirit make a way out of no way. We're going to we're going to connect with nature no matter what is really what sits at the heart of outdoor afro and who shoulders I stand on when I think about what's possible for more people and what we can contribute to connectivity benefit for people and planet, but also what it can also mean for our economies.
00;18;00;06 - 00;18;05;24
Stefan Van Norden
So how can people find out more about the work you are doing and outdoor afro?
00;18;05;26 - 00;18;35;28
Rue Mapp
Yeah, Outdoor afro dot org is where you can find all of our blogs, our programs, how you can make a donation and how you could even become a volunteer leader with outdoor Afro. We opened that invitation up to people every year, usually around the end of the year, and we train and develop people to have the skills to get people outside in their own communities.
00;18;36;00 - 00;19;00;25
Rue Mapp
We did a poll before starting the Outdoor Afro Volunteer network in 2012 asking people like, if you want to get outside, like what's in your way? And there were no really concrete reasons why people weren't getting out. They didn't know where to go, what to do. And so safe. They didn't know about wildlife or about welcoming. The biggest reason was time.
00;19;00;25 - 00;19;24;01
Rue Mapp
Like people just didn't quite know how much time they needed to be able to have meaningful outdoor experiences. And so we trained volunteers with those values and barriers in mind so that people can not only get out with us, which is great when they do, but we eventually want people to get out without us.
00;19;24;03 - 00;19;46;20
Stefan Van Norden
So in 2022, you published Nature Swagger, an important book of wonderful stories and visions of black joy in the outdoors. What inspired you to make this book, and were you surprised by all the amazing stories you were able to collect?
00;19;46;22 - 00;20;08;27
Rue Mapp
I would say that book is something I've wanted to do for a while. I was pretty overwhelmed by the idea of doing it. You know, as I mentioned, I've been raising my three kids. I've been nurturing a fledgling organization that felt like a fourth kid. So I didn't really conceptualize what it would take to write a book, but I knew I had a book on my heart in 2020.
00;20;08;29 - 00;20;46;13
Rue Mapp
I just sat down to begin writing my story and collecting the memory of all the different experiences I'd had since starting Outdoor Afro and then beyond. And what took shape quickly was the need to not make it about me, but to amplify the voices of all the people I had gotten to know over the last decade. And so most of the people, I would say almost all except maybe one or two or people I personally knew, who I'd broken bread with, who I'd expeditions with, who were part of our outdoor Afro volunteer network and so on.
00;20;46;15 - 00;21;11;19
Rue Mapp
To me, it was kind of its own symbolic homecoming of bringing all of these different voices and all of their experiences, because being black in the United States is not a monolith. There's all these regional differences and educate national diversity and interest diversity that I wanted to elevate so that people could see themselves. And the book is filled with photographs.
00;21;11;27 - 00;21;31;22
Rue Mapp
So it's not just the stories, but it's also the pictures. It's the inspiration you might get of seeing someone doing something that you've never seen, someone who looks like you doing. These are all folks who I knew, I respected and whose voices I wanted to have a bigger platform to be heard and memorialized forever.
00;21;31;25 - 00;21;38;21
Stefan Van Norden
So I'm wondering if you might share your standing invitation from the book.
00;21;38;23 - 00;22;09;05
Rue Mapp
So my dad was a he was a black man from the South with the most can do way of living I've ever witnessed in my life. But he also equally had a very compelling way of helping people feel welcome and really embodying the spirit of hospitality. And people would come and visit our family ranch and he would say to everybody when they would be about to depart, you know, you you have a standing invitation now.
00;22;09;08 - 00;22;48;09
Rue Mapp
And it was just his southern drawl. It was the sweetest way of basically saying, once you've been invited, you're always welcome. And that's exactly what I saw him do time and time again. And that's the kind of welcoming that is really a part of the heart of Outdoor Afro is helping more people. You know, there's 40 million black people in the United States, and there's there's a huge frontier, if you will, out there of helping people to find that standing invitation to get reconnected to the outdoors for their healing.
00;22;48;09 - 00;22;55;20
Rue Mapp
And quite frankly, for all of our healing and especially for our healing across perceived differences.
00;22;55;22 - 00;23;09;22
Stefan Van Norden
And you're right, nature, swagger is felt with wonderful stories. And I'm wondering if you might just share a few highlights from the book that touched you in a special way.
00;23;09;24 - 00;23;31;17
Rue Mapp
Well, it's a tough one. You know, they're all you know, it's like it's like they're all they're all my children in the sense that it's hard to elevate one over the other. What I really appreciate, just from a semantic point of view, is that we didn't divide the book on, okay, here's the hiking section, here's the biking section, and here's the this and that.
00;23;31;20 - 00;24;08;12
Rue Mapp
And I really wanted to highlight stories that were beyond outdoor recreation to ones that were also about being in an intimate relationship with the outdoors, whether it be gardening or hunting and we don't see stories like that. You know, there's also a long history of the black community farming and getting their own food from the land. And so I'm really proud of how that is a really important part of the book, but also what makes it distinct.
00;24;08;15 - 00;24;29;26
Stefan Van Norden
So we're going to move forward a little bit that more recently you have discovered or rediscovered the connection between hunting and the natural world. What led you to that reconnection and how is hunting part of the Black heritage of the outdoors?
00;24;29;29 - 00;25;06;18
Rue Mapp
You know, my dad was a hunter, as was my mom, actually. I grew up eating all kinds of food. We ate venison, quail, pheasant. We've bashed a lot, so we had fresh fish. I caught my first puppy at four years old. Unfortunately, that tradition died with my parents and uncles. I was really bereft of not being able to eat the variety of foods to be as intimately involved with the life cycle of the animals that we eat and being responsible in a clear way.
00;25;06;20 - 00;25;29;17
Rue Mapp
It was a it was something that I yearned to get back involved with and decided that it was a part of the story that needed to be told about the black experience and as I got connected to my family roots, that this was also part of our story. And it's also a source of pride in our community that I think is worth remembering.
00;25;29;17 - 00;26;01;18
Rue Mapp
And and for those who are willing to learn how to do again. And so I as a side project and through individual mentoring, have helped people learn how to hunt. What people have come to appreciate more and more is the important contribution to conservation that hunting represents to manage populations that would otherwise be at risk of disease. Hunting provides a way of helping those populations stay healthy.
00;26;01;20 - 00;26;30;15
Rue Mapp
So the seasonality and the ability to hunt is a really wonderful way to be in touch with conservation. But also it really is one of those who do. I feel like our taste buds have been desensitized to what things actually taste like. If you're only eating poultry from the supermarket, you're going to get what comes from a feedlot and what I really have loved about hunting is how much it's helped me to appreciate wildlife.
00;26;30;15 - 00;26;56;23
Rue Mapp
And that kind of thing happens to be my favorite activity. It's a very different experience to take that duck that was living wild in the marsh just hours before and be able to pick it down and clean it at home. And when you look at its insides, you see the elements of the marsh. I mean, it's really it is a full circle experience.
00;26;56;23 - 00;27;33;29
Rue Mapp
And then you bring that bring that experience and those stories to the table. And it's cooked in a way that is respectful and honors that life in a very, very different way than than what you can experience from something that you you buy off the shelf. The mindset of hunters is so much about respect, and it starts with safety, you know, respecting people you use, whether it's a bow or firearm or the hook at the end of the line.
00;27;33;29 - 00;28;10;18
Rue Mapp
It's it is so filled with respect and education and people who do hunt and they aim to be good ambassadors of hunting because it preserves the opportunity, obviously. But it also has a really strong conservation ethic. And I, I have never met a hunter who's not also a conservationist like my dad was absolutely a conservationist, but he would have never necessarily have known about the kind of conservation icons that we have.
00;28;10;20 - 00;28;41;06
Rue Mapp
He was a conservationist in his own right in that he was living in the kind of seasonality and harmony and balance around use and extraction that lent itself to a healthy ecosystem on his ranch, you know, as a hunter, because it's so high touch and intimate and consequential. You you can't ignore the conservation value of it and you want to be a part of that.
00;28;41;08 - 00;28;56;14
Stefan Van Norden
So finally, what is some advice that you might give not only to the African American community but to everyone on how to connect better with nature?
00;28;56;16 - 00;29;23;00
Rue Mapp
Well, you know, I think it starts off with really understanding that nature is not someplace over there, that it is something that is at hand and available for everyone. And it's as simple as recognizing the nature. And you we're breathing air that was once rain. We are influenced by the lunar cycle with bodies made up of a majority of water.
00;29;23;03 - 00;29;54;26
Rue Mapp
We are incredibly connected to the seasons and more so if we raise our consciousness around it, we can look out of our kitchen windows and notice the bird species in our backyards. We can grow vegetables on our front porch in containers. There is something for everyone. And then you can take what you know about nature and you can share it with other people and thereby you become a leader in nature.
00;29;54;29 - 00;30;20;00
Rue Mapp
Anyone can be a leader in nature. Think about what you can teach someone who might be children in your sphere of influence. You know, pass that knowledge on.
00;30;20;02 - 00;31;14;20
Stefan Van Norden
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Rue Mapp and that you take the time to visit the website OutdoorAfro.com and read her book Nature Swagger. I hope you will share Nature Revisited with family, friends and colleagues and that you will follow us on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and our Website, NoordenProductions.com. The Music for Nature Revisited is Tim Buckley, Buzzin Fly. Nature Revisited is produced by Stefan Van Norden and Charles Geoghegan, and I hope you'll join us for our next edition of Nature Revisited.
00;31;14;22 - 00;31;21;08
Stefan Van Norden
And in the meantime, remember, we are nature.