‘Backpacking in America as a Person of Color’ by GPTA Board Member Clay Bonnyman Evans

Just a couple miles past the Mason-Dixon line during his Appalachian Trail thru-hike, Daniel White, aka The Blackalachian, and a female hiking partner decided to camp at Pen Mar Park.

Just after dark, a group of white men riding motorcycles and driving trucks began shining their lights on their tents and howling like wolves. Soon, more showed up, some with large dogs.

White, an African American hiker who grew up not far from the AT in Asheville, North Carolina, thought, “I see where this is going.” He and his white friend quickly broke camp and moved on.

“It was an eerie experience,” he says now.

It was also the kind of experience that most long-distance hikers would not encounter or even worry about. But growing up African American, White had always been taught to be attuned to potentially dangerous situations. Some people he knew frankly thought he was crazy for “going into the woods” for months at a time.

“After public lynching was made illegal, they would chase people with dogs and lynch them in the woods. You don’t go in the woods,” he says, “because you might not come back out.”

Read the full story on The Trek