Bridging the outdoors: Diversifying the Adirondack experience

Adirondack museum provides beginner’s guide to outdoor recreation at “Xperience for All” event

By David Escobar

There is barely a ripple on the surface of Marion Carry Pond before a group of paddlers begin slicing through the water.

The pond, which is part of the Adirondack Experience, The Museum on Blue Mountain Lake, is popular with visitors who feed the trout or rest in an Adirondack chair along the shore.

However, visitors congregated at the pond on a recent September day for a paddling lesson. Mike Nerney, an interpretive assistant at the museum, watched from the shore, guiding participants as they found their rhythm on the water. The pond’s depth — three feet at its deepest — made it an ideal spot for beginners to practice techniques.

Part of the museum’s “Xperience for All,” the event started as a way to introduce people to outside recreation. It has evolved into an effort to address the lack of diversity in the Adirondacks’ outdoor spaces.

 The Adirondack Park, which covers six million acres, attracts millions of visitors each year, yet the vast majority are white.

Diversifying the park

A 2023 study by the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism found that around 95% of leisure travelers to Essex and Hamilton counties and the communities of Saranac Lake and Tupper Lake were white.

Adirondack Park Agency board member Benita Law-Diao, who is Black and lives in the Capital Region, said the lack of nonwhite tourists can be partially attributed to a lack of awareness about the park in communities of color.

“Everywhere I go, I ask people, ‘Have you ever heard about the Adirondack Park?’ she said. “And so many people, inside and outside the state, don’t know it exists.”

However, Law-Diao said awareness-building is only part of the solution. While many see the Adirondacks as a premier place for outdoor recreation, Law-Diao said she believes Black and Brown community members can feel discouraged from visiting the park.

“When people of color come up here and don’t see other people of color, we don’t feel welcome,” she said.

Law-Diao said a source of tension between communities of color and the Adirondacks has been the region’s association with the state’s prison system.

“Word of mouth is powerful, and especially in the Black and Latino community,” Law-Diao said. “If someone has a bad experience coming up to see someone in prison, they’re not going to want to come up to here.”

So Law-Diao has been working to build relationships among Adirondackers, Indigenous people and people of color, including at the Xperience for All event. Through her community organizing, over a dozen buses transported visitors from cities such as Albany and Plattsburgh to attend the event.

Law-Diao said her hope is for visitors, many of whom were people of color, to walk away with a different perspective of the Adirondacks.

“They’re being welcomed,” she said. “Hopefully they’ll say, ‘Hey, let’s come up here together with our families.’”

Bridging the outdoor recreation gap

Throughout the day, visitors cruised the museum’s 121-acre campus on fat tire bikes and hiked through the woods. Vendors also taught introductory-level workshops on campfire cooking, lacrosse and birdwatching.

On a grassy field, Brandon Dale, a New York City-based fishing guide who regularly visits the Adirondacks, taught visitors how to cast. Dale coached visitors by helping them create “D loops” with their fly fishing lines.

A lack of proper lessons is just one reason Dale said people are deterred from fly fishing. He said gear costs and safety concerns are significant barriers for people looking to adopt the sport. Dale, a Black man, said barriers to hunting and fishing are especially prevalent for people of color, who do not always feel a sense of community in the predominantly white space.

“I think for a lot of people, that is a reality that prevents them from going outside,” Dale said.

At the event, Dale partnered with Brown Folks Fishing and Hunters of Color, two organizations working to diversify the angling and hunting communities. Dale said outdoor diversity efforts will take time, especially among hunters. Fewer than 2% of hunters are people of color, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

Dale said he believes simple steps like fly-casting demonstrations can be entry points. One of his students, Clifton Park resident June Beckford, was learning how to cast a fly rod for the first time. “The experience was great, and to see someone of color doing fly fishing…I think it’s marvelous,” she said.

Dale said hunting and fishing have shaped his worldview and relationship with nature, so he wants to use his experience to inspire others to explore the outdoors.

“The outdoors are for everyone,” Dale said. “We’ve been out here, and we literally will stay out here.”

Beyond learning how to paddle or fish, organizers of the “Xperience for All” said they hope that visitors leave with a sense that the Adirondacks — and outdoor spaces in general — are open to everyone.

David Escobar is a Report For America Corps Member. He reports on diversity issues in the Adirondacks through a partnership between North Country Public Radio and Adirondack Explorer.