Paying it Forward with Responsible Exploring: A Discussion with Gabaccia Moreno

Gabaccia Moreno is a first-generation Mexican-American multi-disciplinary creator, consultant, and passionate outdoor advocate #ExploringResponsibly wherever life takes her. Her works, whether artistic, creative, or entrepreneurial, have always intersected with the social and environmental issues that surround her. She is most recently serving as a Director of Social Responsibility on the board of Hiking My Feelings, hosting and curating the Joshua Tree National Park Association's virtual series Desert Live, and has also launched her own Live conversation series named Exploring Responsibly and Explorando Responsablemente on Instagram. Today you’ll find her writing, advising businesses and nonprofits, or adventuring outside, probably taking photos, fishing, or hiking.

When you grow up with a family of hunters and ranchers, and plenty of access to the outdoors on a preserve, nature as self-care and natural resource management becomes second nature. It’s given Gabaccia Moreno a deep understanding of the benefits that come with nature and the realization of the privilege she had growing up with access to the outdoors at such a young age.

“When I was little my dad would let me go on walks by myself around the preserve that they managed in Mexico. My safety weapon was a whip. I had it on my hip and I would go as a little girl walking around looking for jaguar tracks because that was the exciting thing to do so I always wanted to see one. I know they followed me because I saw their tracks when going back home so I know they saw me but they never let me see them, which is okay.”

It was there on the preserves of south Mexico that Moreno found her deep connection to nature, and it’s been a journey of self-care that has only continued to grow. After she met her current boyfriend of five years, she found herself exploring new ways to experience the outdoors. Starting with hiking, to taking their first backpacking trip on a 40-mile loop in the High Sierras, to even living on the road for two years and exploring different national parks around the country.

“We started fishing and so we did our first fishing and backpacking trip and that was probably one of my favorites because we were in Rocky Mountain National Park and we hiked to an alpine lake, brought the fishing rods and we got to cook fish and ate trout burritos at night. It was so cool!”

It’s those moments in the mountains or in the backcountry that bring Moreno the most joy and freedom, but it’s sometimes the occasional solo trip that is the ultimate reset button. Working full time for an agency, doing freelance work for nonprofits and small businesses, on top of curating insightful and motivational content on her social media takes up a lot of her time, but at least once a year she dedicates some time to go by herself in the backcountry.

A Mantra to Live and Learn By

What started out as a hashtag inspired by nature, turned into a mantra for everyday life. For Gabaccia Moreno, #ExploringResponsibly is more than a hashtag. It’s a symbol of the way she wants to explore and live. It’s a reminder that visitation to public lands is all about respect. Respect for the plants and animals who live there, respect for other visitors and their experiences, and respect for yourself to make sure you make it home safe. It’s also the realization that our decisions can have a lasting impact, both positive and negative, on the places we love.

“I like to be mindful of the places I come in contact with. I like to be mindful of the Indigenous peoples of the land, past, present, and future. It’s the way I made a commitment to explore. I think using the hashtag has also served to inspire my friends and other folks that I just met to roll with that mentality, that there is a sense of accountability in how we relate to nature and our everyday lives,” Moreno said.

“Sure, the idea of exploring responsibly was inspired by nature but it really goes into every aspect of life,” Moreno continues. “How can we be more aware? How can we be more mindful? How can we be more considerate of others and considerate of the earth in what we do? What we purchase, who we give our money to? It’s just a reminder to be aware that there’s always a connection between everything that we do and everyone that we know and we don’t know.”

In many ways, #ExploreResponsibly has gone beyond the trails for Moreno and has become a big part of the work she has been focusing on recently which is empowering people to get outside, especially those who are often underrepresented such as Black, Indigenous, or Women of Color. A quick glance through her Instagram account gives viewers a glimpse into the amazing community that Moreno has built surrounding outdoor recreation as well as bringing awareness to barriers that many don’t even know exist in the outdoors.

“There’s a long history of racism and oppression, and the outdoors is not a space isolated from that history. I would say the best place to start learning about systemic barriers in the outdoors is learning the history of race in the US and that will give you a really clear picture of some of these barriers or how these barriers came to be. For a lot of people that are in historically oppressed communities, they see the outdoors as exclusive to white people. They see it like that for multiple reasons, one of them being representation in the industry. So, if people of color are not seeing themselves represented, then they don’t feel invited, and even if they feel invited by their friends, once they get there they might not feel fully welcome. I’m just speaking from my personal experience but also from conversations that I’ve had with other folks.”

Most notably, Moreno has been working recently in collaboration as a host for a She-Explores podcast mini-series called See Us Outside, which explores the relationships girls and women of color have with the natural world and outdoor recreation.

“In this mini-series, it was in collaboration with the Cairn Project (a nonprofit organization mobilizing to empower young women in the outdoors) which had awarded grants to these four organizations that helped break down these barriers by helping create opportunities for young women to get outside. In this series, we got to interview people from leadership in these organizations, those who have worked in those programs, and women in the community who speak on their own relationship with the outdoors and how they have been shaped by their families. I think it’s a really powerful series that gives you an insight into what that is like and into the lives of people who live with that reality. So, for anyone who is new to understanding what systemic barriers in the outdoors are like and thinks, ‘What do you mean not everybody feels welcome here?’ Well, not everyone is empowered to access the outdoors in the same ways.”

Empowerment Through Access

Although Moreno had the experience and access to the great outdoors from a young age, it’s the understanding of the benefits that being connected to nature can have that has given her the opportunity to address systemic inequalities that prevent others from having the same meaningful outdoor recreation and nature-based educational experiences as she had.

For those who are interested in learning more about this issue or looking to get involved, she suggests first taking a look at the many activists on Instagram that are addressing barriers and taking action, such as Indigenous Women Hike, Native Women’s Wilderness, Indigenous People’s Movement, Brown Girl Green, Intersectional Environmentalist.

“These are places where you can go and just from their feed, there’s so much you can learn. But, please don’t reach out to people directly for one on one consultations unless you are willing to pay for their time. This is a lot of emotional labor for the people who are on the frontlines and doing this work. They are putting out a ton of resources on their websites on their feeds so a lot of the questions and curiosities that folks are probably going to get can be answered just through reading those resources that are already out there. But there’s always the opportunity to support those folks...so if you're gonna buy some gear why not look up Black-owned outfitters and get your gear from there instead. Or, why not look up Indigenous shops or Indigenous-owned brands and support them that way. Those are little steps, in the long run, this is all about creating relationships and coming together and working together.”

“Another very important resource I would say that has also helped me challenge my relationship with the public land is a book called, Dispossessing the Wilderness,” Moreno continues. “It’s about the removal of Indigenous peoples from different spaces for the sake of creating the National Parks Service. I think that as people recreate on those lands, it’s the minimum responsibility we can take to get informed about it, and then you might be inspired to take action, hopefully. But, at least get to understand the complexities of that history.”

And for those that are looking to set off on the trails for the first time? Moreno suggests to just go for it, but make sure that you are prepared! Get familiar with the route, do your research, and make sure to have all the necessary equipment you might need, like a first aid kit.

“Right now because of Covid it might be hard, but if you can go with a group of people that are already hiking because you’ll learn a lot, you’ll be absorbing all the knowledge from what they do. I think those opportunities are available in a socially distanced way which I highly recommend people pursue if there is a meetup or a local hiking group. I think that's a really fun way to get started.”

Want to see more from Gabaccia Moreno and her work? Make sure to check out the latest podcast episode of See Us Outside and follow her Instagram for awesome content at @gabaccia.