Of Dumpster Tarps and Dude Bros: A Dispatch from the PCT about Privilege on Trail

A picture of Gracetopher at the Southern Terminus that I stole from their Facebook.

If there's a more interesting person than Gracetopher Kirk on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2018, I don't know who it is. Gracetopher's a queer writer and photographer who you might remember from this piece we shared a few weeks back. They've been published as one of Oregon's Best Emerging Poets, and are the most inspiringly intrepid of dirtbags, tackling the PCT on an absolute shoestring after spending last year recovering from a broken back that interfered both with hiking plans and employment possibilities. This year, they scrounged gear together, made a tent from salvaged material from a dumpster, and are crowdfunding for food by writing along the way.

At last check, Gracetopher's more than 200 miles in (Cabazon, for our hiker nerd friends), and moving along well. After coming to one of our Portland events before starting the trail, they've also been sending us dispatches along the way, which we're stoked to be able to share with you all.   

They've sent us a couple of pieces describing the process of finding and creating their dumpster tarp, as well as the origin of their trail name MacGyver (unsurprisingly, those events are related), and we'll share those with you eventually.

But by way of introduction, I feel like a recent personal reflection they sent us on privilege on trail is a better place to start in getting to know them, and tracking their journey.

Gracetopher sent it after seeing and participating in a thread on Facebook about the relationship between privilege and the outdoors, which goes to show that even potentially contentious Facebook conversations will sometimes produce something worthwhile. (There's a metaphor in here about how social media is like a dumpster we all keep digging through because sometimes we find a useful tarp, but I'm feeling too lazy to work it in.)

The term "privilege" has become one of those zeitgeisty buzzwords laden with baggage gathered in a thousand social media arguments, but it's also come up repeatedly as a barrier to participation in the outdoor community as we've heard stories from moms just trying to exist in the outdoors, interviewed Sophia Dannenberg, a mountaineer and the first African American to climb Everest, and spoke with a mom whose daughter is a world class skier and long distance hiker with Down Syndrome. 

Gracetopher's commentary gives some helpful insight into ways that issues related to privilege impact their experience in the trail community, and it's a chance to get perspective from a type of voice that doesn't get much of a platform traditionally. Is it surprising that overall the trip's been great, but that they've already had to deal with some weird bullshit from creeps on trail? I don't know. I can say that Gracetopher's an inspiring human, and I'm happy they're out there, blazing those literal and figurative trails. And I'm happy that we have a chance to share their experiences with you all.

(A small disclaimer: Gracetopher's agreed for us to share this, but because they're a working writer, I want to be clear that this isn't intended as a representative polished piece of work. It's a conversational contribution about privilege in the outdoors from someone living directly in the middle of the challenges that come along with being queer and poor on the PCT. They recorded it by dictating into their phone along the way, so this is wild, organic fruit grown directly in fertile SoCal PCT soil.) 

Gracetopher's Dispatch on Privilege

I ​certainly feel privileged to be here. After the many health issues I had during 2016 and the one major nearly life ending falling off a roof incident on January 1, 2017, I’m very aware of how lucky I am to even be alive. To have the physical ability to hike the Pacific Crest Trail this year is something I am immensely grateful for. So that’s privilege number one: able-bodied privilege. Not to say it’s impossible to have adventures when you are not able-bodied, but I know that in my case all of the things I am most excited about our things but I would not be able to do all paralyzed. 

And then there’s finances. I’m out here on a shoestring budget, and as far as I know there’s only one other hiker on a budget like mine. I did hear about someone who once made it 1000 miles on the PCT and only spent $100. Having already spent $50 plus postage myself, I am duly impressed. I'm able to resupply mostly out of hiker boxes, and I am lucky enough to have what some might call a way with words which I have been able to use in conjunction with my social media marketing skills to fund this trip.

Even so, I am out here with far less money than most. I went to Paradise Valley Café (one of the first, and most popular, restaurants you pass on trail) for water, not a burger. If it wasn’t for the generosity of my fellow hikers, I would’ve sat there, quietly sipping my water, for the time it took for my phone to charge. I don’t get to eat burgers, and I don’t get to stay in hotels. What will I do in the case of bad weather? Well, if it comes to life or death I suppose I can overdraw my checking account. It takes money to go on adventures. I’m not paying rent right now, but I still need food, and occasionally I have to pay to camp somewhere. My friend wine troll said, “we’re all just paying thousands of dollars to be homeless.” I don’t have thousands of dollars, I have a dumpster tarp.

I have even said that part of why I am doing this is because I want to be a writer. Writing doesn’t pay rent, so easy solution: just take the PCT. It’s a socially acceptable way to be homeless for six months so that I can finally afford to focus on my writing. And honestly, that’s about the best decision I could have made.

In terms of race, I’m white, so I can’t speak to the experience of being anything else on trail. I will say however, that I definitely have noticed that the hiker community is even whiter than Portland, Oregon. And that’s saying something. 

Gender of course has it’s obvious male and female categories, but what about those of us who fall outside the bounds of the gender binary? I feel, as an AFAB (assigned female at birth) person, that in some cases I end up experiencing the worst of both worlds. Growing up, being treated as a little girl, my father told me never to hitchhike. While he had done it quite a lot in the 70s, he told me it wasn’t safe anymore, and that it had never been safe for women. I’m not a woman, but I do have a body that happens to have breasts, and I have learned already that I don’t need to hitchhike anywhere for those breasts to be a magnet for unwelcome attention. A fellow hiker recently as a "joke" asked if he could see them.

I’ve also found it difficult at times to navigate [asking other hikers to refer to me by my preferred they/them] pronouns on the trail. Now, for the most part, the hikers are pretty accepting. All except one of the people I have told have just been like, "Oh yeah of course, cool." And while some have had questions and some have had difficulty switching to pronouns that they’ve never used in a singular sense before, most have been or at least have tried to be respectful. The one exception of course being the same dude bro who asked to see my breasts.

As a queer, I am very lucky and very grateful to have a grown-up in a hiking family. I’ve only met one other gay person on trail so far, and he is writing an entire blog about his experience because he had such bad times in Boy Scouts due to homophobia that he didn’t get into hiking until very recently, when introduced by his husband. You can’t be what you can’t see, so if queers don’t see themselves in the outdoors, they won’t come out here. 

It can feel difficult at times to talk about privilege in outdoor an adventure spaces because I was raised to get what I get and not throw a fit. If I draw the card in life to only be able to be out here under a dumpster tarp and to only have one gay friend out here, then fuck it I’ll be out here anyways.

It is still important, however, to acknowledge that there are things that definitely make this more difficult for me and for people like me.

My gay friend on trail is Erik “Wine-Troll” Scheets, and his blog is agaygonewild.com. His Instagram is @hikinghomo

Watch that blog and in a month or two you might see a guest post written by yours truly. 

Gracetopher is writing constantly from the trail - poetry and narrative. Patreon is their main outlet, and I want them to get to Canada, so I really want to encourage readers to click this hyperlink to support through their account. What they're providing is an ongoing, multifaceted and vivid window into a Queer experience on trail, and it's more than worth $1 or more a month to access. But you should also check out their Instagram @adventureswithgracetopher and their blog Adventures with Gracetopher. If you're interested in supporting them in any other way (one off donations, publicizing their Patreon, sending them an actual tent or some money for burgers,, etc.) to help make sure they get to Canada, let us know and we'll help you make the connection!

And if you like what we're doing at Boldly Went, consider joining our community of supporters on Patreon to help us keep forging ahead!

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