I didn't grow up outside

by Becky Lam

My mother was baffled. She and my father had become naturalized citizens in Honolulu after arriving as refugees of war from Vietnam in 1982. It wasn't an idyllic childhood, as I'm often asked by strangers who imagine the outdoor oasis of Hawai'i. We were poor and lived in a run-down public housing complex, but it was still a far cry from the destitute upbringing they’d had outside of Saigon where toiling in hot fields, hiding in the jungle from pillagers, and running from air raids were normal aspects of life. Here in America, they had blue-collar jobs, a stable roof over our heads, and the normalcy of not having a violent war unfolding outside. We at least had the basic comforts of urban life that they never had. So of course they didn’t have a recreational context for “The Outdoors” and my wanting to go outside for fun — to go “camping” with my friends — was a confounding idea. Why would you want to sleep in a tent outside, unprotected from the elements when you didn’t have to? “No,” she replied. “It’s too dangerous.” 

By the time I was ten, I gave up asking for permission after hearing “no” too many times. Whether it was a day hike in the valley nearby or an overnight cabin trip on the other side of the island, my pleas were met with the same stern response and the furrowed brows of a mother who worried why her youngest child kept asking to go outdoors. My parents worked all the time and I grew up in a household where simply going outside to play was actively discouraged. “Stay home and read a book,” my father would say. “Focus on your education so you don’t end up like us.” I couldn’t argue with their logic, so I started lying to my parents about where I was going. I often begged my mom to let me hang out at my cousin’s apartment a few blocks away when we were actually horsing around outside, completely unsupervised. We wandered around the banks of nearby streams, climbed monkey pod trees at the park, and cut our feet on the rocky beach while trying to catch intertidal creatures. But this outdoor freedom abruptly ended one day when my aunt called home to ask where my cousin and I had gone. It was just before dusk when I slowly opened the screen door into the living room and felt the weight of the atmosphere shift. My mother emerged from the kitchen, a wave of anger quickly following behind her. I was in deep shit.

From then on, I acquiesced to a life indoors. My parents were hoping to finally become homeowners — a big part of the American Dream — but the high cost of living in Hawai’i was prohibitive to economic mobility. To better their chances, we relocated to the Seattle metro area in the late 90’s. We adjusted to a quiet life in yet another outdoor mecca, the Pacific Northwest, but this new terrain of rugged mountains and emerald greenery did nothing to change my home life and by then, I’d already lost my childhood curiosity for the outdoors. Apart from the after-school extracurricular activities to build up my college applications, I didn't have much of a social life nor was I encouraged to explore my new surroundings.

I experienced a huge culture shock from leaving the racial and cultural diversity of Honolulu to settle in a largely white suburb of Seattle. Suddenly, there was no longer anyone I could relate to at school. I felt like a foreigner while my peers marveled over the idea of being born and raised in Hawai’i. I would try to deflect questions about how awesome it must have been to grow up on the islands, hiding the shame of not really knowing the “paradise” they referred to. I lied about hanging out at the beach all the time and surfing (which was apparently what all the kids from Hawai’i did, at least according to the white kids around me). I naively tried to fit in by hiding behind false stereotypes and self-consciously trying to get rid of my pidgin accent.

I got my first job at fifteen as a way to get out of the house and to start saving money for college. So while many of my peers went snowboarding in the mountain passes or swimming and boating in the lakes over the weekends, I stayed in town to work at my job. I began to see the connection of privilege to outdoor recreation because there were some others like me in high school who also held jobs and came from working class or immigrant families. After long winter and summer breaks, the rosy cheeks and excited stories made it clear who had the time and resources to get outside and who didn’t. I felt deeply jealous, but there was not much I could do. Throughout high school, I tried to ignore what everyone else was doing and kept my head down while repeating my father’s mantra. I thought if I made it to college, things would change.

But my indoor workaholism continued well into college - study, work, sleep, repeat - and became so ingrained that I never quit my habits, even after I’d moved out of my parent’s house. I was putting myself through school, so again while many of my classmates partied on the weekends, snowboarded in the winter, and traveled abroad over the summer, I was working. I couldn’t afford to participate and felt ashamed that I wasn’t having fun. I knew it was also a product of the environment I was in — business school at a large university — but I still questioned the legitimacy of my experiences.

I'd adapted to a nine-to-nine work routine when out of the blue, an old friend called me to go on a long day hike out in the Olympic Peninsula. I hadn’t been invited to do anything outdoors in a really long time and was caught off guard. What’s a day hike? Plus, the place seemed inconveniently far away, so I hesitated. But he kept insisting. “Just bring your hiking shoes and I’ll pick you up early in the morning,” he said casually as he tried to hang up to avoid my further protests. “Wait! I don’t own hiking shoes,” I interjected. “Just wear some boots or anything with a stiffer sole that feels comfortable,” he instructed. “Or stop by the Big 5 and get a cheap pair if you want. Just don’t worry about it!” And he hung up.

I was an outdoor noob, so of course I was worried about it. I’d never “gone hiking” (nor did I understand what it was exactly) and the only type of footwear I owned for walking on unpaved roads were a worn out pair of athletic sneakers. I felt desperately unprepared. With anxiety mounting in my stomach, I hurried to the store after work that night. I was still a poor college student, so I tried on the cheapest pair of hiking boots. They were rigid and mildly uncomfortable, but the only other shoes that were in my size were twice the cost. There wasn’t any staff around to help me, the store was closing, and I had no idea what to look for. So in a panic, I settled on the cheap stiff pair.

As promised, my friend showed up early the next morning and we promptly set out on the four hour drive to Mount Ellinor in the Olympic Peninsula. We caught the ferry in Seattle to cross the Puget Sound while I waited for a reasonable hour to call in sick to work. The cold wind snapped me awake and it dawned on me that this was my first time over these waters in the six years I'd lived here. Watching the soft outlines of the mountains move beyond the water, I suddenly felt how sheltered I'd been and began to really see this place for the first time. Here was a captivating environment that I’d been completely oblivious to. On the other side of the Sound, I witnessed more of the natural terrain and continued to be entranced by each changing landscape and smell. My ears were permanently perked up like a dog’s and I really couldn’t believe that I had been missing out on all of this nature within driving distance. 

We pulled into the empty parking lot for the lower trailhead and my stomach clenched with a mix of excitement and nerves. Fortunately, the hike started out smoothly with regular switchbacks that meandered under a moderate coverage of old growth trees. I was reassured by the shade and modest climb and my nerves quietly subsided. It continued pleasantly for some time, but as we ambled along, the trail grew considerably more difficult and the ascent opened up to the baking sun. My initial reassurance quickly shifted to anxiety and fear as I stumbled over the dry, craggy path. It seemed to get steeper the further we climbed. This was my first outdoor hike and it was REALLY HARD. What the hell did I get myself into?

As we hiked, my friend kept cheerily pointing out the abundant wildlife in the area as a helpful distraction and we stopped for frequent water breaks, mostly for my benefit. To my surprise, there were mountain goats lazily ambling along the rocks and ground squirrels darting across the trail at my feet. Even a three-legged goat made light of our uphill struggle and got a lot closer to us than I anticipated it would. It seemed curious, but I kept my distance and tried not to make eye contact (because I thought, Isn’t that a thing?). And after what felt like thirty minutes of an awkward scrambling dance, we managed not to provoke each other. Back on the trail, it took a long hot stretch of hauling up a seemingly impossible incline before it finally occurred to me that a hike was, at its most basic, a brisk walk in the outdoors — only in this case, a vertical exercise with a lot of knee-scraping and mountain goats.

Now, I was baffled. Why had my mom been so afraid of this?

My feet were in pain from fresh blisters and there were many more moments of me pausing to catch my breath, wondering what this was all about. But after a few hours of laborious climbing, we summited the trail to Mount Ellinor. At this elevation, July snow still patched the slopes of neighboring hillsides not fifty feet away and the air was noticeably chillier. The horizon was clear enough on this day that we could make out the silhouette of Seattle in the far distance past Hood Canal. Standing in silence, I filled my lungs with cold air and felt a buzz of excitement course through my body. There was something new about being on the peak — I felt strangely jittery and calm at the same time. I didn’t quite understand it then, but it was a mixture of awe and humility from getting my ass kicked by the trail. The burning aches on my feet were drowned out by the sound of quiet wonder. It would be the same feeling in the future that would draw me outdoors again and again.

It’s at this point in the story that I tell you about how my life changed after that first hike and how I transformed into an outdoor adventurer. But that’s not what happened. Yes, it was an incredible first hiking experience (and I have my old friend to thank), but change wasn’t that simple. I was still in college, relatively poor, and addicted to work. I didn’t have a car to get around easily or many friends to share the outdoors with. I continued to have a fraught relationship with my family. I suffered from depression and didn’t know how to find help. I rarely spent time outside and the outdoors still felt beyond my reach. In this way, I continued to struggle.

I can’t recall how or why, but I eventually started to have some weekend days off from work. Around that time, I met a new friend who was also interested in hiking, so we managed to get outside on a hike every so often. After a family health scare, I moved back home to the suburbs and soon after, my mom unexpectedly adopted a dog. Walking the dog became a surprising chance to get outside, but he had a tendency to be hyperactive and temperamental. Since we never had a family pet, nobody knew how to train or care for him properly. A friend and experienced dog owner suggested that I take the dog outdoors and train him off-leash. I had been finally able to save enough money to buy an old car and with it, I began taking the dog out to some of the larger regional parks and open spaces to let him romp. I’d only taken him hiking on a couple of trails before I noticed a difference in both of our moods.

It’d been about a year and I had summited a dozen or so trails in the Washington Cascades. I felt physically and mentally healthier than I’d ever been. I decided to go to graduate school in San Francisco, but the move proved to be jarring and being back in the rigor of academia quickly undid most of the progress I’d made. I found myself overworked, in an unhealthy relationship, and back under a cloud of depression. Throughout that chaos, I somehow eked out a handful of outdoor treks with some of my cohort who were also excited to get outside. This included my first overnight backpacking trip in the wilderness and a short excursion to see central Patagonia during a month-long study abroad program. (I had no idea what I was doing and fumbled my way through both trips.) In those handful of opportunities, I found that I had flung myself far in the other direction to compensate for the lack of balance in my life. Graduate school had wreaked havoc on my body, but it’d also inadvertently introduced me to the wonders of backcountry camping, sleeping outside, and travel.

After finishing my sedentary years of academia, I vowed to get back in shape and find a therapist, but progress was slow. I was working in architecture, a field standardized by a brutal work culture of being overworked and underpaid, and often caught myself daydreaming about being outside. I constantly wavered between prioritizing my health or advancing my career, but I never felt capable of doing both. Over half a decade, I grew to resent my work while stealing away on rare weekends in the woods. Only in retrospect do I realize that those weekends weren’t just an escape from the stresses of modern life, but they were also a part of the gradual process that started with my first hike of cultivating a personal relationship with the outdoors. After a few more years of struggling with my work-life balance, I came to understand the thread between this relationship and my physical and mental well-being. And now in my thirties, I finally see how being outside is the perfect facilitation for healing. Don’t get me wrong - I still work too much and don’t get out to the wilderness as often as I would like. But for now, I manage an everyday balance that works for me. I am lucky to have a supportive partner who shares my love for the natural world and an energetic dog who is vital to getting me outside most of the time. The key I’ve found is the culmination of daily rituals and outdoor trips that help maintain a stability I’ve never had before. When I do find myself in the backcountry those handful of times a year, I am overwhelmed with humility and gratitude. It is from this place that I’ve forged a relationship with and respect for the natural world that is essential to my well-being and sense of identity.

In the end, this is not a pretty anecdote or a neatly packaged story about my accomplishments, but that’s okay — that’s real life. It didn’t take a single life-altering experience to inspire real change, but rather an ongoing series of everyday decisions and battles that have taught me how to nurture a connection with our outdoor places. Along the way, I’ve been fortunate to meet some amazing people who’ve motivated me to advocate for the outdoors and think critically about the context it exists in, especially who is outside, how they are represented, and ultimately how it affects our society as a whole. To this day, I struggle to find stories that are like mine, though I’ve met many others who share similar journeys of getting outside. If there were more feature stories about like-minded people from diverse backgrounds who experienced different struggles and developed their own relationships with the outdoors, then maybe I would’ve been inspired to get outside sooner. And maybe a lot of other people would too. It is with these sentiments that I started The Outdoor Advocate, a passion project that I’ve been thinking about for some years. I want to talk about real people who are hidden from the outdoor narrative, discuss the issues around access to outdoor recreation, and feature stories about environmental conservation that affects us all. I’m not sure how this project will evolve, but for now, I’m getting to know the people who are outside and listening to those who are engaged with the land. It’s humbling to hear their stories and I hope to do them justice by sharing them with you.