Evelynn Escobar is a changemaker in the outdoor industry who’s building her movement a little differently. She has taken an intentional approach to building a fun, stylish and inclusive community- encouraging Black, Indigenous, and women of color across North America to spend more time in the outdoors together.
Evelynn Escobar is a changemaker in the outdoor industry who’s building her movement a little differently. As the founder of Hike Clerb, Evelynn has taken an intentional approach to building a fun, stylish and inclusive community. As a result, Hike Clerb has achieved an incredible amount of success. They’ve worked with several well-known brands and are encouraging Black, Indigenous, and women of color across North America to spend more time in the outdoors together.
Connect with Evelynn:
Episode sponsor:
Evelynn Escobar:
In order to build a community, in order to support a community, in order to be there for others, you have to first and foremost be there for yourself.
Shelby Stanger:
Evelynn Escobar is a thoughtful leader and change maker in the outdoor industry. She's thrown out the blueprint on how to grow a business in a nationwide network. She's building her movement a little differently, taking her time to do things in ways that align with her values. I've only interacted with you twice and it was on email, and your boundaries are totally kick-ass.
Evelynn Escobar:
Thank you.
Shelby Stanger:
I want to read people what your out-of-office message says.
Evelynn Escobar:
Do you want me to read it?
Shelby Stanger:
Yes. Yes.
Evelynn Escobar:
Okay. Here we go. It says, "Hi. Thank you so much for reaching out. It is normal for me to take 48 hours to read emails, an additional 48 hours to reflect and respond intentionally, especially now, as a new mom. We are living through a time of heightened uncertainty and a culture of irrational immediacy. Your patience as much appreciated. I'll get back to you at my earliest convenience."
Shelby Stanger:
I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studio's production.
Five years ago, Evelynn founded the popular non-profit hiking group, Hike Clerb. It started pretty intuitively. Evelynn wanted to see more diversity in the outdoors, so she created an organization that equips Black, Indigenous, and women of color with resources to heal and find joy in nature. Evelynn has taken an intentional approach to building a fun, stylish, and inclusive community. As a result, Hike Clerb has achieved an incredible amount of success. They've worked with several well known brands like Nike and Nordstrom, and Evelynn recently got to interview one of her favorite musicians, Ciara. On top of all these career accomplishments, Evelynn also just became a new mom.
Evelynn Escobar, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Evelynn Escobar:
Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Shelby Stanger:
So you're a new mom. Congratulations.
Evelynn Escobar:
Thank you. Yeah, she turned one in the end of May. Literally the last day of May, but I can't believe that she is this big now and everyone always says it goes by so fast, but it really does, so we're just really enjoying every moment we can.
Shelby Stanger:
Everyone I talk to says mothering is the best adventure.
Evelynn Escobar:
I love posing it that way.
Shelby Stanger:
And the wildest.
Evelynn Escobar:
Honestly, so wild. Probably the most wild adventure that I have been on yet, and I feel like I've done some pretty wild things. Yeah, I can agree to that.
Shelby Stanger:
I thought we'd start with your relationship to nature right now, today as a mom, as an activist, as a leader, and how do you get outside and how do you enjoy experiencing it?
Evelynn Escobar:
Yes. Honestly, I am doing a lot of hiking, but even just walking and just sitting outside. Now, I'm also going to so many parks and getting on the playground and playing outside in that way. It's always been this place for joy and just exploration, but now, getting to do it again through the lens of an infant that is growing so much every single day. It has just been so fun to really dive deep into my own inner child and be able to re-parent myself in that way too. I feel like I'm always a big kid in general, even before becoming a mother, but then when you actually have a child who you have to take out to do fun things, you're really living your big kid dreams again.
Shelby Stanger:
I love it. How did you get introduced to nature as a child?
Evelynn Escobar:
I grew up in the suburbs of DC. I grew up in Northern Virginia, so there was a lot of opportunity to get outside. I had woods behind my house, so I just played in the woods with all the other kids in the neighborhood or played in the creek and that was just normal. That's just what we did. You just go outside to play, but I didn't really have any official like, "Oh, we're going to go hiking or we're going to go camping." I didn't really have any structured playtime in nature in that way, even though I literally grew up so close to this big state park where you can do all of that stuff.
But it just never felt like it was for me in that place. It really does feel segregated as far as outdoor recreation goes. Those are white people things or we don't do that, or just the unfamiliarity and also, the historical implications that come with going outside and sleeping outside are not necessarily... Have a positive connotation for communities of color. It's very interesting because I definitely grew up with somewhat close proximity, but it wasn't until I got to LA that I really dove in.
Shelby Stanger:
What brought you to LA?
Evelynn Escobar:
My aunt actually lived here while I was growing up, so my first visit was when I was 10 and she took me on my first hike experience. We went up to the observatory and I just remember being in such awe of the observatory and the views, and so, every time I would come visit her, we would always go hiking. It was that thing where like, "Oh, I'm going to LA. I got to bring my..." At this time, it was my old running shoes to go hiking in.
I ended up spending a summer out in LA while I was in college doing an internship. That summer was my hiking summer. I did all the major hikes. I really felt super comfortable with the land itself and that led me to eventually moving after I graduated to LA because of the proximity to all the different natural environments, but also still having the city aspect. It felt like a good blend of both worlds.
Shelby Stanger:
It's so cool that you say that LA has all these natural aspects along with the city because a lot of people don't think of LA as having any nature.
Evelynn Escobar:
I think people just tend to forget that LA, when it comes to outdoor recreation, just has so much to offer and not even that far away.
Shelby Stanger:
The buzz of city life is a huge draw to Los Angeles, but it's easy to forget about the beautiful nature around LA County. With places like the Santa Monica Mountains, Angeles National Forest, and Malibu Beach, there's a huge variety of things to see and do. When Evelynn moved to LA, she hit the trails and got even more into hiking and adventuring. A few years later, she was visiting some national parks when she came up with a wild idea to start Hike Clerb. Can you tell us how Hike Clerb came to be? Because it's so cool and the name, I don't even get the name, but I like it. It's catchy.
Evelynn Escobar:
Yes. Basically, we're actually celebrating five years this year. I formed it in October 2017, and it had been maybe two or three years that I had already been living in LA and already having had that foundation of doing all these hikes around the city and now, I'm wanting to venture out. Eventually, I go visit my first national park at the age of 23, which is so crazy that it took me 23 years to finally go to a national park, but I went to the Grand Canyon and to Zion and it was on that trip that I realized just how white and homogenous the outdoors were and still are, and I always tell the story because it's so important.
I just remember going to Zion and being met with curious stares being the only Black woman out there and I just was thinking to myself, that is so interesting because I look more like the people who this land is actually native to. My ancestors are just a few miles south also being indigenous to Guatemala. It was just a very interesting experience because I thought I was going to a touristy destination. In my mind, touristy equates to diversity and that is not what I saw there.
Understanding how quintessential a practice of going outdoors was to my own healing journey and to my own mental health, I realized that I really need to help get other Black and Brown women out here so that they can experience what it means to just be in nature, and so that I can one day have the experience where I can go to a national park and not be the only one, you know what I mean? Not feel isolated in that experience.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah. Okay. Then how did you decide, "Okay, from that experience, I'm going to start a hike club. Instead of calling it a hike club, I'm going to call it Hike Clerb," which is funny.
Evelynn Escobar:
No, literally. Choosing the name, first of all, was intentionally funny because just culturally, there's just so many different just isms as far as renaming things and just being playful with things, and so, going to the clerb is one of those things. If I'm like, "Okay, I'm starting a hike club, might as well just call it Hike Clerb." You know what I mean? It was intentionally lighthearted because while we are doing real radical work, it's also rooted in joy and fun and that was an intentional aspect.
Now did I know that five years later, we would be at this place where it's really official and we're a nonprofit and all these things and Hike Clerb would still be the name? No. I still get a little chuckle out of that too. Also, starting it was one of those things where I felt like I needed to do it and it wasn't necessarily in this super organized way. It literally was like I saved the name on Instagram, started the profile.
I told my friends, "Hey, thinking about starting a hiking club. Will y'all come?" on Twitter and on Instagram. People said yes. I told them where the first hike was. It was a hike up to the observatory, which was my first go at a hike as a 10 year old child. I had 10 friends show up, which I was like, "Wow, okay. This is really great. There's 10 of us," and we took photos. My husband took our photos. I posted them on the Instagram and that is how it started. For it to start that way and for us to be where we are now is just so wild. Truly a wild adventure from start to finish.
Shelby Stanger:
I love that. I love that you didn't need to go fundraise and get capital and you didn't write a business plan. You're like, "Screw it. I'm just inviting 10 friends." Simple. That's awesome, but hiking even as a word is intimidating. Let's be honest. Hiking is just walking outside.
Evelynn Escobar:
It is a glorified nature walk most of the time, but also, I think one thing that even I have troubled totally articulating is just that in regular conversation, talking about nature, going out into nature, it's always like you're going into this place, but taking a step back and realizing we are all inherently a part of nature, so we are never separate from it, and it's really important that when you realize that you are a part of it, that everything that affects it affects you, you look at it differently and you have an understanding and a basis of respect for all other living and non-living things.
Shelby Stanger:
What is a hike club to you and how did you make yours different?
Evelynn Escobar:
I think for me, I've always just seen it as this collective and this safe space, literally in the sense that I was hiking alone a lot before forming Hike Clerb and knowing that that's not the safest thing as a woman who may not see someone for 20, 30 minutes on a trail where you may or may not have service, but then also figuratively, for it to be truly this melting pot where you can bring your whole self or you can take up space. That to me just means coming just as you are, as your fullest most vibrant self across any environment.
Naturally, coming as that to Hike Clerb and fitting in and being welcomed, and so, I think by not thinking about it in the lens of a hike club and more of this collective community that is creative and that will not only help ourselves heal, but also this intergenerational healing, now, with Hike Clerb being this multi-generational, multiracial movement is something that is very purposeful and intentional.
Shelby Stanger:
When we come back, Evelynn talks about using art and design to develop her brand, how she thinks about building community and her advice for going after your wild ideas. On Hike Clerb's first group outing in 2017, just 10 people showed up. Most of them were Evelynn's friends. Now just five years later, Hike Clerb has hundreds of participants in multiple cities across North America. What started as a hiking group has turned into something much bigger.
Black, Indigenous and women of color are getting outside together in all sorts of ways, whether it's hiking, birdwatching, kayaking, or surfing. All of these activities are part of Evelynn's inclusive and unique vision. Evelynn's leadership revolves around showing up as your truest self. When she leads with authenticity, she attracts people who share her values. Evelynn considers herself multi-passionate. She loves getting outside, but she's also artistic and has an eye for design.
The Hike Clerb brand is hip and it's playful. Their graphics in merch feature candy colors, sunset gradients, and a nostalgic vibe. Okay. One thing I've noticed about Hike Clerb just in looking at it online is there's beautiful art and graphics and it just seems cool. Talk to me first about this. How did you bring in cool art and fashion and work with all these different brands? I know this was intentional because you seem to be a very intentional woman.
Evelynn Escobar:
Yes. Well, you know it's so funny, because again, this has just been such a period of reflection because this is five years of Hike Clerb, and so, being this culture shifter, cultural leader in the outdoor space is not something that I ever had on my radar. The fact that that's now this role that I've stepped into, it's still a lot to process and just feel like, "Wow, I can't believe this is where we are now," but I think the beauty and really the secret sauce for it to look and present the way that it does is the fact that I'm not coming in with this super outdoorsy, traditional background.
My background was in fashion and beauty, social media management as far as work goes, and so, the beautiful thing about a Hike Clerb is it draws such a creative community. You can meet so many different types of women doing such cool things. There are artists, there are designers, there's even women who work at NASA. It is seriously insane the people that it draws. Because I have always approached it from this unconventional place, we've broadened the scope of what it is to be an outdoors group, what it is to be a hike club, and who can be in the mix, and being so intentional about working with artists and designers. We have a very unique design language to Hike Clerb and it's something that helps differentiate us from a traditional outdoor lens, and I think that in itself has just invited a whole new crop of people to even think about going outside and then take that step to feel welcomed and actually come and join us on a hike.
Shelby Stanger:
It's very cool. How does style, art, design, culture, travel, activism and the outdoors, all these things you're passionate about and doing, how do they all intersect?
Evelynn Escobar:
Honestly, I would just say they make sense because it is me. You know what I mean? It is just a genuine extension of who I am and what I'm interested in. We are all multi-passionate people who have multitudes of interests and hobbies, and for me, I really am someone who has always been like, "I want to do everything that I feel passionate about." Very go big or go home mentality when I'm really deeply interested in something. Naturally, all of these things that I am very passionate about come together and they make sense because I'm the glue that makes them stick, and I think all of us have those unique combinations of all these things that we're passionate about and being that glue that makes all those things make sense in their own way.
Shelby Stanger:
Well, I think what's really cool is you're telling stories not just on Instagram, but through your hikes and through what you're doing and you're helping other people recreate their stories. I know as a surf instructor, no job ever helped me change more lives than taking someone and showing them their first wave and then they would go home, they would move across the country, leave bad relationships, change jobs.
Evelynn Escobar:
Yes.
Shelby Stanger:
You must have some stories with Hike Club about people coming in and affecting them on a personal level.
Evelynn Escobar:
Definitely, which is obviously the most rewarding part of it all. I think one of the common stories that we see is just like... Well, first of all, we just have a lot of people who come out by themselves, which is something I'm very proud of because that means that I've created a space that people feel so safe and welcomed in that they're willing to come out by themselves to meet a whole new group of people, but taking it a step further and seeing that this is a common story of women coming out alone but then leaving with lasting friendships, and I actually just ran into two women at a flea market here in LA and one of the women had come on our night clerb on Catalina Island and she was with another woman who she met from Hike Clerb who they're now BFFs and they celebrated their birthdays with each other.
Just seeing that makes me so happy because it has also become this tool to just find your people on a deeper level away from just the group, making lasting friendships and relationships. Also, the stories of just realizing their own power by going outside and by providing that space for themselves to hear themselves and to listen to themselves. Much like my own story, it just is so energizing and so motivating. Even from the mom level that now women are inspired to go out and take their kids out hiking or camping with them and feeling like they are totally capable of doing it, because seeing me out there with my daughter on my back, and I lead the hikes with her on my back and realizing like, "Okay, no, actually. It isn't so hard," is just amazing.
Shelby Stanger:
Is it not hard? It seems kind of hard.
Evelynn Escobar:
Well, I always talk about this mom power that comes from just birthing a child. After that, you can truly just hold them, carry them, and it comes from somewhere because you know you can't let them fall. You just have the power to just go the mile and make it happen.
Shelby Stanger:
Evelynn set out with the mission to get more people of color out into nature. She's fostered new friendships, inspired fellow moms to seek adventure and empowered women of color to enjoy outdoor spaces together. Hike Clerb is a growing community and they're expanding the types of events they offer. For example, they host a Hike Through Prospect Park in New York, Bird Watch in Toronto and Night Clerb, overnight camping trips that center BIPOC experiences. I want to talk to you about the power of building a community because it's not just you hiking. You've taken all these people who now have friends of their own and have invited other people. For you, what has building a community taught you?
Evelynn Escobar:
I think one of the big things that I've had to learn is in order to build a community, in order to support a community, in order to be there for others, you have to first and foremost be there for yourself. Making sure that you are taking care of yourself and keeping a part of yourself for yourself is so important, because I think a lot of times, we can sacrifice ourselves in support of the mission and support of the journey, but by doing that, you're not even operating at your best self for these things.
You really have to make sure that you are putting on your face mask. They always say on the plane, "You got to put your mask on before you put it on someone else," or else you have nothing, which I think has been really challenging for me because I'm just so go, go, go, and I want to accomplish all of these things, but it's like, "No, slow and steady wins the race. You're going at your own pace. Take your time. Make sure that you have all that you need so that you can give everything you need to give to everyone else."
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah, I completely agree with you. Advice to people listening who want to follow their own wild idea.
Evelynn Escobar:
My hope is that people listening feel empowered to just start, period. Start wherever they are with whatever they can and know that that is more than enough, and that when you are in your flow, when you're doing what you are meant to be doing, the path unfolds itself, and you don't have to think about A through Z, you just have to think about A to B, which is just literally taking step one and commit to moving forward, commit to being nimble, commit to being intuitive, and allowing yourself the time to process and to think about what is needed about what the next step is, and also, just above all, staying true to who you are and what it is that you even want to be doing in the first place.
If you do that, you cannot fail. There're only learnings in this life. I think we came from such a time of growing up in such a binary way of thinking of everything's good or bad, or you're failing or you're succeeding, but when you see life as this long journey that it is and you're just learning lessons along the way, you realize that you cannot fail. Let's replace fail with redirection because you can only ever be redirected, but if you see everything as an opportunity to learn and to grow from, then you cannot fail.
Shelby Stanger:
For Evelynn, tackling her wild idea has meant staying open to opportunities and not dwelling on how things could go wrong, because as she reminds us, "There is no wrong way to take a step closer to where you want to go." Evelynn Escobar, thank you so much for coming on Wild Ideas Worth Living. Your values of insight, intention, depth, and transparency have clearly played a large role in the creation of Hike Clerb, as well as just informing how you live your life. It was a joy to talk with you.
If you want to learn more about the upcoming events that Hike Clerb is hosting, you can follow them on Instagram @hikeclerb. That's H-I-K-E-C-L-E-R-B. I also highly recommend you check out Evelynn's personal Instagram @evemeetswest. That's E-V-E-M-E-E-T-S-W-E-S-T. Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI podcast network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, written and edited by Annie Fasler and Sylvia Thomas of Puddle Creative.
Our senior producer is Chelsea Davis and our associate producer is Jenny Barber. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby, who was once able to eat 32 hamburgers all at once. Impressive. As always, we appreciate when you follow this show, when you rate it, and when you take the time to write a review wherever you listen, and remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.