“Black people don’t do that.” How the ‘Outdoorsy Diva’ is challenging travel stereotypes

10 years ago, Lauren Gay stood on the shores of the Lagoa do Fogo—the Lake of Fire—in the Azores, tears streaming down her cheeks. She saw the volcanic lake as a mirror, a version of herself in its waters; that is, from the destructive power of a volcano was born something beautiful and restorative. In that moment, for the first time in a long time, Gay realized she was going to be fine—that from the destruction she faced at home, something beautiful might emerge.

At the time, Gay was in a long-term relationship with a man whose abuse went from emotional to physical. However, as both Gay and her partner had sons and were living together as a blended family, she’d long thought her situation was inescapable. But she knew, deep down, it was time to walk away.

One evening, while scrolling online, Gay saw an all-inclusive deal on a trip to the Azores, where, for little more than a USD$1,000, she could spend a week exploring the verdant chain of nine volcanic islands some 870 miles off the coast of Portugal. That trip would become her lifesaver.

I met Gay earlier this year, on a trip to the remote reaches of northern Norway. While the rest of us on the adventure were dressed in the muted earth tones of contemporary ski gear, Lauren’s hot fuchsia pants and her almost neon-aqua coat stood in stark contrast to the bleak whiteness at the top of the planet. Soon, I would learn how those clothes were more than just colorful flair; they were a representation not only of Lauren, who happily marries her sense of adventure with her passion for bold, bright, eye-catching style, but of her sense of Black culture at large. “Bringing style and a bit of razzle-dazzle is one of the great benefits Black culture brings to the world,” she told me. “So I lean into that 1000 percent.”

As Lauren and I stood beneath the Aurora Borealis, examining the photos we both captured, her contagious energy radiated through the frigid Arctic air. It was during this trip, and afterwards, that Lauren told me more of her story. After she returned home from the Azores in 2015, Gay left the relationship and began telling her story to an audience of several thousand, one she spent the previous few years building almost exclusively though her blog.

“I came back from that trip with a new lens,” she tells me. “All I did was tell my story. Not just the travel stuff, but my story. About how that trip impacted me and changed my life; about how not only is nature transformative but travel, too.”

“I can’t tell you how many times I was met with people saying, ‘That’s white people shit.’ Or ‘Black people don’t do that.’” Rather than deter her, these accusations that she was doing “Blackness” wrong in some way steeled Gay’s resolve to show, through her own adventures, that travel and exploration is for everyone.

And even though she only begun to publicly mention her experience of domestic violence, people were responding to it, sharing their own stories and struggles. “I heard from so many women who were in domestic violence situations,” she says. “I heard from people who were dealing with depression and dark times in their lives.”

By the time of her transformative trip to the Azores, Gay had been traveling for years. It was on a church-sponsored camping trip to Windy Gap, North Carolina, aged 14, that she first experienced the magic of outdoor exploration. “I felt this freedom that came with being outside; a happiness that I didn’t always feel,” says Gay, who was raised between Dallas and Florida. “However, back home, it wasn’t like my mom was going to take me camping. I harbored the idea of doing it again. But it was hard because my mother grew up in a time and a place where Black people feared going into the woods. And it certainly wasn’t something a single mom could do with her daughter.”

Gay points to the fact that that fear wasn’t just cultural; it was, until relatively recently, embedded into law in much of America, especially in the corner of the South where Gay’s family has long hailed from. “I am the first generation of my family to have legal access to our national parks,” Gay said.

Not long after starting school at Florida A&M University, an historically Black college, Gay had her son. The rigors of college and single motherhood left no time to explore. It wasn’t until after school, when she was 23, that Gay began to return to nature.

It was then that she joined a friend on a hike to DeSoto Falls, a waterfall in the northeast corner of Alabama. When several of her Black friends learned of the trip, they laughed. It was a theme Gay would encounter almost any time she announced her adventure plans. “I can’t tell you how many times I was met with people saying, ‘That’s white people shit.’ Or ‘Black people don’t do that.’” Rather than deter her, these accusations that she was doing “Blackness” wrong in some way steeled Gay’s resolve to show, through her own adventures, that travel and exploration is for everyone.

And so, the travel-thirsty Gay began to seek out solo adventures, and, as he grew up, with her young son. Gay soon realized that she didn’t have to travel far, or spend much money, to enjoy nature. By 2013, she was writing publicly about her mother-son adventures on a blog called ‘Kayaks, Canoes, and Shoes,’ encouraging the people in her community to spend more time exploring, adventuring.

Within a year, Gay rebranded herself as ‘Outdoorsy Diva,’ which she felt better encapsulated the dichotomy of who she was; a person who felt at home in nature but one who also wanted to express herself through style and fashion. “I love nature and I love being outside,” she said, before reminding me of fact that she very intentionally packed fuchsia ski pants and a turquoise jacket to spend a week four degrees above the Arctic circle. “But I’m still very much a diva, a girly girl. So I’ll make sure to wear lipstick when I hike or cute kimonos or whatever. You don’t have to be one thing or the other and that’s what the ‘Outdoorsy Diva’ idea tries to encapsulate.”

As her profile slowly grew, Gay was exposed to a subset of mothers who were trading their online presence for funded press trips. In those trips, Gay saw a way to treat her son to special experiences. “At the time, I was just looking for cool places to take my son,” she says. “We went to (the indoor water park) Kalahari, Disney, a race at Daytona. But still, I made sure to focus on the outdoors stuff.”

In the years that followed, Gay focused on domestic and regional travel, experiencing scores of state and national parks. She learned how to hike, zipline, and ride horses. She camped in the Great Smoky Mountains, glamped in Utah, snorkeled in Trinidad and Tobago, and even went to a major birding convention in Ohio, where she learned to identify a variety of small birds. All the while, her profile continued to grow as new social platforms such as TikTok popped up and older ones like Instagram continued to evolve, all under the brand of ‘Outdoorsy Diva.’

“That’s the thing that I’ve worked so hard to demystify. That it’s OK to go out and do these things, to experience them as a Black woman. “If anything, I’ve experienced more racism at home than I have abroad.”

- Lauren Gay

Not only was Gay learning about the natural world around her, she was also learning about herself.

“I was getting knowledge about outdoor safety, how to camp, and what I liked and didn’t like about being in the outdoors,” she said. “But I was also learning that I didn’t have to be like everyone else. All these other people, camping like minimalists. That worked for them. But I learned that it was okay to pack my car down, to have all of my creature comforts that I needed to enjoy my time.”

In 2020, Gay’s online profile exploded, in large part due to the global pandemic. As heavy lockdown restrictions slowly eased, people sought out the kinds of adventure Gay had been trading in. She began to land appearances with the BBC, CBS, and ABC, where she would talk about her adventures and experiences, almost always pointed out the fact that she was traveling the world, often alone, as a Black woman. She was highlighted in USA Today, Huffington Post, and National Geographic.

As recently as this May, Gay contributed to Lonely Planet’s Women Travel Solo book, where she wrote the story of that life-changing to the Azores. Just last week, she filmed a segment with Samatha Brown, showing the popular PBS travel host around Tampa for the coming season of Brown’s show, Places to Love.

Most importantly, she kept traveling, visiting 43 of America’s states, including Utah, Wyoming, and Alaska, and covering 26 different countries, such as Japan, Zimbabwe, Iceland, and Ireland, all with the aim of exposing her growing list of followers to the adventure available to them.

And while Gay admits that traveling alone as a woman does come with certain challenges, mostly in the realm of personal safety, she has enjoyed what she describes as “overwhelmingly positive experiences” throughout her travels.

“That’s the thing that I’ve worked so hard to demystify,” Gay said. “That it’s OK to go out and do these things, to experience them as a Black woman. “If anything, I’ve experienced more racism at home than I have abroad.”

Meanwhile, following the high-profile murder of George Floyd, Gay saw many influencers opening up about their experiences being Black in America. Soon, brands began to follow suit, trying to capitalize on the moment.

In response, Gay, along with 16 other Black travel writers, professionals, creators, and influencers, started the Black Travel Alliance, a non-profit advocacy group whose goals include encouraging, engaging, and equipping Black travel professionals and enthusiasts while also holding brands accountable by calling them out for performative posturing, and to encourage them to use Black travelers to tell their stories. Today, the BTA counts more than 3,100 across the globe.

According to Gay, one of the biggest accomplishments of the BTA to date has been the implementation and rollout of one of the first surveys of Black travelers, to better learn the travel and spending habits, and needs and desires of the Black community and its relationship to the travel industry. “The survey has led to the ability to speak to the USD$194 billion that are spent by Black Americans on travel each year,” Gay said. “It’s providing us data to try and implement change across the industry.”

Gay is wholly candid, unafraid of being herself. It’s an openness and lack of fear that Gay says can be traced back to that hike in the Azores, where the power of a volcanic lake helped her to realize not only the power of travel and adventure, but the breadth of her own strength. “We need this kind of content now more than ever,” she says. “We need ways to cope and to deal with the world around us.”

****

Adventure.com strives to be a low-emissions travel publication. We are powered by, but editorially independent of, Intrepid Travel, the world’s largest travel B Corp, who help ensure Adventure.com maintains high standards of sustainability in our work and activities. You can visit our sustainability page or read our Contributor Impact Guidelines for more information.