{"id":3738,"date":"2023-11-01T05:12:46","date_gmt":"2023-11-01T05:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/goldenbricksevents.com\/main\/2023\/11\/01\/opinion-nature-keeps-me-grounded-how-burns-racism-and-death-inspired-this-wa-outdoor-festival\/"},"modified":"2025-07-04T21:09:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T21:09:08","slug":"opinion-nature-keeps-me-grounded-how-burns-racism-and-death-inspired-this-wa-outdoor-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/goldenbricksevents.com\/main\/2023\/11\/01\/opinion-nature-keeps-me-grounded-how-burns-racism-and-death-inspired-this-wa-outdoor-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | ‘Nature keeps me grounded’: How burns, racism and death inspired this WA outdoor festival"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

(This article is reposted from https:\/\/trailposse.com\/2019\/09\/nature-keeps-me-grounded\/ .)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Powell was released from Hermann on May 12, a date she counts as her \u201csecond birthday.\u201d Her friends call it her \u201cPhoenix birthday,\u201d because she rose from the ashes like the mythical bird.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been gifted a lot of life I wasn\u2019t supposed to have,\u201d Powell said. She had 14 surgeries by the time she was 15 years old. The last one unsuccessfully attempted to lower three toes in her right foot to the ground. Rather than try again, she decided to keep on moving.<\/p>\n

Powell\u2019s many travels landed her in Seattle, where last year she launched the Refuge Outdoor Festival<\/a>, a three-day camping experience geared toward people of color and their allies. The event centers on community building and includes workshops and arts and other outdoor activities. The second edition will be held Sept. 27-29 at the Tolt-McDonald Park and Campground<\/a>, near Carnation.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s festival will be capped at 300 participants. People, including Powell\u2019s parents, are flying in from other parts of the country, prompting her to contemplate holding similar events in other regions of the country in 2020.<\/p>\n

The festival was inspired by Powell\u2019s experiences at Camp Janus<\/a>, which she calls \u201cBurn Camp,\u201d a therapeutic and recreational camp in Texas for burn victims. \u201cBurn Camp\u201d revealed to her not only the healing power of nature, but of sharing space with people who either looked like her or shared her circumstances, whether they be racial or gender identities or surviving fire.<\/p>\n

Powell is Black, with a cleanly shaven head and a friendly face framed by smoothed-over scars. She comes from an event-planning background. This particular event, the Refuge Festival, happens to be mission-driven, though not in a way that others might assume.<\/p>\n

One of the dominant false narratives of the outdoors is that people of color are missing from it. Purveyors cite statistics showing whites accounting for nearly 80 percent of visitors<\/a> to national parks or 93 percent of bird watchers<\/a>. On the other hand, 70 percent of respondents<\/a> to a survey of nonwhite voters said they participated in outdoor activities on public lands.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to change the conversation because people of color do [outdoor] things,\u201d Powell said. \u201cWe just talk about it differently. We don’t talk about being outdoors. We just go fishing. We just go do the activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nature was why Powell relocated to Seattle nine years ago, but she already was immersed in it. One of her childhood preoccupations \u2014 in addition to a fascination with fire (\u201cI was a little pyro,\u201d she says) \u2014 was wanderlust. In grade school, she studied maps of her native Texas, the United States and the world. She became determined: \u201cOh, I\u2019m going everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a quest to visit all 50 states (she is up to 44), Powell checked off Oregon, then Washington, during an Amtrak trip to Chicago. In Seattle, she spied mountains, trees and water, and vowed to return. She eventually did, taking a job with AmeriCorps, a domestic community service program.<\/p>\n

After founding her consulting business, Golden Bricks Events<\/a>, Powell landed at REI as an event planner. There, she used an employee grant to take a solo backpacking trip in New England, not long after her first-ever backpacking trek, which she did with a group of women of color that summer.<\/p>\n

Powell had driven to Stowe, Vermont, where she planned to spend the first night of her two-week journey in a hotel. While checking directions, she noticed she was being followed by a police car. She\u2019d had her share of driving-while-Black incidents, but this one was different.<\/p>\n

The white male officer followed her into the hotel parking lot. When Powell exited her car, he blasted his siren and ordered her back in. \u201cWhat are you doing here?\u201d he asked. She explained her trip, pointed out her pack in the trunk and pair of hiking shoes on the back seat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s unbelievable,\u201d the officer told Powell, making a not infrequent assumption. He radioed for backup. When it arrived, Powell overheard the first officer uttering the word \u201cunbelievable\u201d several more times, then the second one saying, \u201cLet her go.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trip was not derailed. Powell later hung out with a white family in Acadia National Park in Maine, after they helped recover the keys she\u2019d locked in her car. She even encountered one other Black person, a man also from Texas; he too was trying to visit all 50 states. She didn\u2019t mention her first-night incident with the police to anyone, not even him.<\/p>\n

Already a seed in her mind, the idea of a Refuge Outdoor Festival began to germinate, she says. \u201cI started thinking, what can I do so things like this don\u2019t happen to people?\u201d Powell added. \u201cI do events.\u201d She went back to REI, then left to start her business.<\/p>\n

Death, her lifelong shadow, provided a final push. Powell lost 11 family members during a nearly yearlong sequence. The eighth was a cousin everyone called \u201cPlump.\u201d Powell had just returned from the funeral of another cousin when she received the call about Plump\u2019s passing.<\/p>\n

It was a sign to get serious about staging the Refuge Festival.<\/p>\n

\u201cNature keeps me grounded,\u201d Powell said. \u201cIt shows that there\u2019s more than just the things I\u2019m dealing with. There\u2019s a grand expanse. \u2026 I\u2019m a piece of the puzzle and not everything in the puzzle. It goes back to the community and engaging that community in trying to make this a better place to live for future generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s apt that Chevon Powell does what she does to help preserve the future. After all, she wasn\u2019t even supposed to have one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/div>\n

Powell was released from Hermann on May 12, a date she counts as her \u201csecond birthday.\u201d Her friends call it her \u201cPhoenix birthday,\u201d because she rose from the ashes like the mythical bird.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been gifted a lot of life I wasn\u2019t supposed to have,\u201d Powell said. She had 14 surgeries by the time she was 15 years old. The last one unsuccessfully attempted to lower three toes in her right foot to the ground. Rather than try again, she decided to keep on moving.<\/p>\n

Powell\u2019s many travels landed her in Seattle, where last year she launched the Refuge Outdoor Festival<\/a>, a three-day camping experience geared toward people of color and their allies. The event centers on community building and includes workshops and arts and other outdoor activities. The second edition will be held Sept. 27-29 at the Tolt-McDonald Park and Campground<\/a>, near Carnation.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s festival will be capped at 300 participants. People, including Powell\u2019s parents, are flying in from other parts of the country, prompting her to contemplate holding similar events in other regions of the country in 2020.<\/p>\n

The festival was inspired by Powell\u2019s experiences at Camp Janus<\/a>, which she calls \u201cBurn Camp,\u201d a therapeutic and recreational camp in Texas for burn victims. \u201cBurn Camp\u201d revealed to her not only the healing power of nature, but of sharing space with people who either looked like her or shared her circumstances, whether they be racial or gender identities or surviving fire.<\/p>\n

Powell is Black, with a cleanly shaven head and a friendly face framed by smoothed-over scars. She comes from an event-planning background. This particular event, the Refuge Festival, happens to be mission-driven, though not in a way that others might assume.<\/p>\n

One of the dominant false narratives of the outdoors is that people of color are missing from it. Purveyors cite statistics showing whites accounting for nearly 80 percent of visitors<\/a> to national parks or 93 percent of bird watchers<\/a>. On the other hand, 70 percent of respondents<\/a> to a survey of nonwhite voters said they participated in outdoor activities on public lands.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to change the conversation because people of color do [outdoor] things,\u201d Powell said. \u201cWe just talk about it differently. We don’t talk about being outdoors. We just go fishing. We just go do the activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nature was why Powell relocated to Seattle nine years ago, but she already was immersed in it. One of her childhood preoccupations \u2014 in addition to a fascination with fire (\u201cI was a little pyro,\u201d she says) \u2014 was wanderlust. In grade school, she studied maps of her native Texas, the United States and the world. She became determined: \u201cOh, I\u2019m going everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a quest to visit all 50 states (she is up to 44), Powell checked off Oregon, then Washington, during an Amtrak trip to Chicago. In Seattle, she spied mountains, trees and water, and vowed to return. She eventually did, taking a job with AmeriCorps, a domestic community service program.<\/p>\n

After founding her consulting business, Golden Bricks Events<\/a>, Powell landed at REI as an event planner. There, she used an employee grant to take a solo backpacking trip in New England, not long after her first-ever backpacking trek, which she did with a group of women of color that summer.<\/p>\n

Powell had driven to Stowe, Vermont, where she planned to spend the first night of her two-week journey in a hotel. While checking directions, she noticed she was being followed by a police car. She\u2019d had her share of driving-while-Black incidents, but this one was different.<\/p>\n

The white male officer followed her into the hotel parking lot. When Powell exited her car, he blasted his siren and ordered her back in. \u201cWhat are you doing here?\u201d he asked. She explained her trip, pointed out her pack in the trunk and pair of hiking shoes on the back seat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s unbelievable,\u201d the officer told Powell, making a not infrequent assumption. He radioed for backup. When it arrived, Powell overheard the first officer uttering the word \u201cunbelievable\u201d several more times, then the second one saying, \u201cLet her go.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trip was not derailed. Powell later hung out with a white family in Acadia National Park in Maine, after they helped recover the keys she\u2019d locked in her car. She even encountered one other Black person, a man also from Texas; he too was trying to visit all 50 states. She didn\u2019t mention her first-night incident with the police to anyone, not even him.<\/p>\n

Already a seed in her mind, the idea of a Refuge Outdoor Festival began to germinate, she says. \u201cI started thinking, what can I do so things like this don\u2019t happen to people?\u201d Powell added. \u201cI do events.\u201d She went back to REI, then left to start her business.<\/p>\n

Death, her lifelong shadow, provided a final push. Powell lost 11 family members during a nearly yearlong sequence. The eighth was a cousin everyone called \u201cPlump.\u201d Powell had just returned from the funeral of another cousin when she received the call about Plump\u2019s passing.<\/p>\n

It was a sign to get serious about staging the Refuge Festival.<\/p>\n

\u201cNature keeps me grounded,\u201d Powell said. \u201cIt shows that there\u2019s more than just the things I\u2019m dealing with. There\u2019s a grand expanse. \u2026 I\u2019m a piece of the puzzle and not everything in the puzzle. It goes back to the community and engaging that community in trying to make this a better place to live for future generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s apt that Chevon Powell does what she does to help preserve the future. After all, she wasn\u2019t even supposed to have one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3739,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-refuge-fest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldenbricksevents.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldenbricksevents.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldenbricksevents.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldenbricksevents.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldenbricksevents.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/goldenbricksevents.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldenbricksevents.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goldenbricksevents.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldenbricksevents.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goldenbricksevents.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}