Nature Needs Greater Diversity—In Its Human Visitors

Drawing More Non-Whites Into Parks and Natural Areas Requires Changes in Access, Staffing, Recruitment—and Narratives

“Is nature only for white people?” was the deliberately provocative query that framed a Zócalo/Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County panel discussion. It was quickly dispensed with by the evening’s moderator, Rahawa Haile, a hiker and writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and other venues.

“I’m going to start out by saying a resounding ‘no,’” Haile said, opening the discussion at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, in Exposition Park. “We are all on occupied indigenous lands.”

And yet ethnicity and economics, power and privilege, do …

Why Americans Invented the RV

In 1915, New Creature Comforts Created by Technology Merged with the Back to Nature Movement

Zócalo’s editors are diving into our archives and throwing it back to some of our favorite pieces. This week: Before pandemic “van life,” there …

The Religious Roots of America’s Love for Camping

How a Minister's Accidental Bestseller Launched the Country's First Outdoor Craze

Summer 1868 passed as an unremarkable season at Saranac Lake in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. The weather was fine, the scenery delightful, and the usual array of 200 to …