Black Women and the Wilderness - Reflective Post

     Evelyn White talks about an invisible fear that haunts every activity she tries to do. In her piece, Black Women and the Wilderness, she states that her “fear is like a heartbeat, always present, while at the same time, intangible, elusive, and difficult to define” (White, 1999). Attending a women’s writing workshop, Evelyn realizes just how powerful this fear of race and the unknown has become when she consistently declines invitations to explore the great outdoors. She is frightened by the fact that her color of skin might lead to her being taunted, attacked, raped, or even murdered. Venturing into the outdoors has the possibility of her engaging in an unwelcomed experience. This fear has deeper roots that have grown from her childhood in the 50’s and 60’s. Her experiences as a colored individual in a segregated world and her memories of stories about black girls being bombed in church and a young male named Emmett Till being beaten and lynched for a harmless act of whistling at a white woman only embrace her fear of the outside world. Still, being much older and having the benefit of now living in a somewhat more peaceful and understanding world, she decides to take a rafting trip on the McKenzie River. This trip reconnects herself to her African ancestry and causes an “unsure but authentic shift from my painful past” (White, 1999). She allows herself to relax and feels that she is stronger at journey’s end. Since then, she is “less fearful, ready to come home” (White, 1999).

     I believe that Evelyn White had a legitimate fear. Being an individual of color in the 1950’s and 1960’s was no walk in the park. Our experiences shape who we are and what we do later in life. Her fear of the wilderness because of what unknown entity or experience may be lurking around is something she grew into. Besides racial tensions, there are other factors which may influence someone’s experience with nature such as sexual, cultural, and political. For example, having the cultural experience of growing up in the city compared to the countryside would greatly affect an individual’s perception of wilderness. Individuals within the city might never learn the necessities of survival or how to explore wilderness. Additionally, engaging too far into one political viewpoint and not expanding your horizon on other possibilities. Experiences with nature come in all forms and neither one way nor another is the correct way to absorb the outdoors.

White, E. (1999). Black Women and the Wilderness. Literature and the Environment: A Reader on Nature and Culture. New York: Addison Wesley Longman.