Beginning Backpacking

Hi! I'm Indigo, a writing professor at Northern Virginia Community College. I'm raising money to teach women, trans, and nonbinary students how to backpack.

Last year, individuals like YOU, REI, Target, and the NOVA-Woodbridge Student Life Office brought this project to life. We hoped for one pilot trip, but were able to take out THREE groups of women, trans, and nonbinary students backpacking!

This then led to monthly day hikes in the Fall 2023 semester.

In November 2024 we received a small grant from the NOVA Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Office, which means this project will expand to Year 2. In addition to teaching new groups of women, trans, and nonbinary students to backpack, The NOVA Outdoors Project will lead free co-ed backpacking trips and host monthly day hikes for the entire NOVA community (students, staff, faculty, & beyond). We also plan to add regular camping to our line up so that even more people, of all different abilities and identities, can experience the outdoors in a compassionate, supported community.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT! We would not have got this off the ground without your donations, trust, and enthusiasm.

Backpacking teaches students how to rely on themselves, increases self-confidence, strengthens critical thinking skills, and supports collaboration and communication. A 2022 study of students thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail found participants “discovered how to integrate individual and broader group goals while also developing self-efficacy, self-confidence, and resilience when dealing with unforeseen circumstances” (Rohn & Conway, 2022). The long history of programs like Outward Bound and Girl Scouts reflects what those who frequent the outdoors already understand: “participation in outdoor adventure education (OAE) programs can confer individual educational, psychological, and social benefits that relate to college student thriving” (Rohn & Conway, 2022). For women, transgender, and nonbinary students, the potential benefits of the outdoors are deeply empowering. A 2004 study of women and the outdoors emphasizes the positive influence of being outdoors, specifically the “absence of self-consciousness” and lack of “pressure or scrutiny” often associated with body-negativity (Wesely & Gardner, 2004, p.653).

However, backpacking is less accessible to students with limited income or who live far from wild spaces. Backpacking is a high-cost activity that can be difficult for novices to access. The essential gear necessary to backpacking (e.g. hiking shoes, tent, cooking implements, water filtration system, trekking poles, pack, sleeping bag) can be expensive. People new to the outdoors may not know cost-saving methods to find or borrow gear.

In addition, camping and backpacking have historically been predominantly white, male, heterosexual spaces (Filemyr, 1997) due to systemic racism, problematic land-use government policies, and safety issues tied to both. As Nicole Boyd, co-founder of Black Girls Hike RVA explains, “The absence of Black folks in green spaces is rooted in a painful past of enslavement and lynchings. Those horrendous acts against African-Americans often occurred in wooded areas and outdoor spaces. Such settings were just not a safe space for Black people for centuries. Even as Jim Crow-era laws were struck down, desegregation in National and State Parks was not actualized for decades.” Further, the history of the United States highlights the intersection of land-grab policies reliant on government policies of the genocide and forced removal of Indigenous communities from their land. Once vacated, these tribal lands became public land that disproportionately benefited white communities. Beyond the issues of systemic racism, outdoor recreation has also long been the realm of heterosexual, cisgendered men. Weseley and Gaarder (2004) show that their study participants, women in the outdoors, “felt significantly less in control, comfortable, and safe when recreating alone” (Wesely & Gardner, 2004, p.653), in part due to gendered perceptions of who has a right to be outdoors (Filemyr, 1997; Kramer 2001). Such concerns highlight the value of women-led backpacking trips for women, transgender, and nonbinary students.

The value and benefit of backpacking and immersion in the outdoors is an experience to which all students deserve access. This project acknowledges the urgency, power, and beauty of making the outdoors accessible, safe, and enjoyable to those long-denied access to the wilds. Groups like Black Girls Hike RVA and Girls Who Hike Virginia have already started “to break the silence around the role of social domination in determining connection to the outdoors” (Filemyr, 1997, p. 160). This project endeavors to join them.