The Venture Out Project

Article originally from the Feminist Hiking Collective in collaboration with the Venture Our Project.  

I grew up in the woods. Not literally, but pretty dang close. I grew up in a small village in Midcoast Maine, a quarter mile from a lake and surrounded by rocks and trees. And each summer, from age 9 to 29, I attended and worked at a wilderness canoe tripping camp in Ontario.

I’ve known that I was queer since freshman year of high school. That winter, I developed a huge crush on a girl in the grade above me and experienced my first rejection when she started dating a very cool senior. Throughout high school, I had crushes on boys and girls. But when I headed up to camp each summer, I left the queer parts of myself at home. For a long time, this was fine. I had my first kiss with a boy at camp, under the stars at Campfire Point. I learned how to steer a canoe in whitewater, cook macaroni and cheese from scratch—with a roux!—over a fire, and carry a heavy pack over rough terrain for miles. As a counselor, I led incredible canoe trips in the Canadian north where we dragged fully-loaded boats up Arctic rivers and scouted and paddled whitewater that looked like it could swallow a boat whole. I built lifelong relationships with campers and co-leaders and realized that I wanted to be a teacher. I look back on the trips I led in my early twenties and am in awe of what I did—wilderness trips taught me so much about how to rely on myself, build community, and care for others.

In the summer of 2018, my first summer not working at camp, my friend Lizzie sent me a podcast about Perry Cohen, founder of The Venture Out Project (referred to from here on out as TVOP). I listened to the podcast while on a run in Seattle, where I had gone with my partner to visit their family. On the podcast, Perry talked about his experience as a teenager on an Outward Bound trip—as a kid who loved the outdoors, he’d been so excited to go on a month-long Outward Bound adventure. He’d heard so many great things about the friendships he’d build and how connected he would feel to the other kids in the group. But when he arrived to meet the rest of the group, he realized that he couldn’t be his full self. At the time, Perry identified as a lesbian, and immediately upon arriving to the trip, the girls split off and starting talking about which boys they had crushes on. As someone who normally felt at home in the outdoors, Perry felt like an outsider. Years later, he quit his corporate job and started TVOP to provide opportunities for queer people to feel at home and cared for in the woods.

Halfway through my run, I had to sit down. Perry’s story hit me hard. It made me think about the parts of myself I had pushed to the side as I did my favorite activities in my favorite places. My heart sank as I realized that I had never really been my fullest, truest self as a trip participant or a trip leader. It’s not that the trips hadn’t been amazing or that the relationships I’d built with my campers and co-leaders weren’t real—it’s that I had never felt safe to be fully honest about who I was. It hurt, thinking about this, but it also explained a lot. There had been moments on every trip I’d been on where I’d felt like I should have been feeling more connected, I should have been having more fun. I’d had to mold myself into the straight outdoor culture around me, which meant never being my full self. As I listened to the podcast, I thought—what would it be like to get to be my full queer self on an outdoor trip?

I knew right then, sitting on that hill in Gasworks Park, that I wanted to be a part of TVOP. I wanted to be a part of making it easier, safer, and more fun for queer people to venture into the woods. I wanted it for me, and I wanted it for other queer people. As a cisgender, straight-passing white woman (among many other privileged categories I embody), I can shape-shift and be perceived as belonging by the mostly white, straight, cisgender outdoor community. Many other people don’t have this privilege. TVOP works to create a welcoming community for all of us.

Three years later, as a volunteer and instructor for TVOP, I can tell you that being a part of this community feels really, really good. Playing in the woods with other queer people feels like letting out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. There’s just something special about queer community. I don’t feel like I need to prove myself, explain myself, or hide myself. For one, I had never realized how much I feel like I have to prove myself when leading trips with—and for—cisgender straight dudes. I’ve had enough men (and boys) doubt my skill set over the years that I would start off on the defensive, showing off my badass canoe flipping skills, making it very obvious that I know how to read a map, volunteering to carry the heaviest pack, and taking the lead on sets of whitewater. With groups of queer folks, I don’t feel this same need to prove myself. I can let down my guard. I feel trusted and cared for, even if I’m the one leading.

Everyone deserves to have access to the outdoors and to feel safe in the woods. Unfortunately, there are a lot of barriers to access—money, gear, knowledge, expertise, racism, homophobia and transphobia are just a few of these barriers. I love TVOP for what it has done for me and for other queer folks, and there are so many other great organizations—like Native Womens Wilderness, Outdoor Afro, Latino Outdoors, Disabled & Outdoors, and Unlikely Hikers—that are a part of the movement to make the outdoors a safer and more accessible place for folks who have historically been marginalized from these spaces. I’m grateful to be even a small part of this work.

The Venture Out Project is located on the traditional lands and waterways of the Pocumtuc and Nipmuc Peoples, past and present. We acknowledge with honor and gratitude the land itself and the people who have stewarded it throughout the generations.