Episode Guest
Morgan Dixon & Vanessa Garrison – Co-founders
GirlTREK
Speed Round
What is your earliest park memory?
Morgan: Ah, my earliest park memory is not a memory. My earliest park memory is being at the basketball court with my brother Kevin, and recently a GirlTrekker told me that she remembers me as a baby in the park in Wichita, Kansas, is with my big brother Kevin, which I think is illegal for him to have me propped up at the park as a baby. But that’s my, first experience in the park. One of my most formative memories is being a camp counselor at Sly Park with Girl Scouts.
Vanessa: I grew up in Seattle, in the central district on 24th and Mercer. At the end of the block is a park that has been there for at least 70 years. It’s the tiniest little neighborhood park with the tire swing. And literally I spent 80% of my childhood playing in that park, meeting the kids at that park.
And so, it’s really the little neighborhood park in my neighborhood. I think it’s called Frazier Park. And it’s literally this, like the plot size of one house. The community decided we were gonna make that into a park, and so every time I even go back home, now I drive down the street. It’s there, and I’m just like, wow.
My mom played at that park when she was little. I played at that park and the park is still there.
What made you love the parks?
Morgan: The sound of swing sets.
Vanessa: I love a good summit. Like I love, once I started really getting into good hikes and then being able to hike up to a summit and see a really beautiful view, it really just enthralled me
What is your favorite thing about our parks and public lands?
Morgan: That it feels like church feels like a sanctuary.
Vanessa: Something about wearing hiking boots. I like what you wear when you go to the park. There’s something about the equipment in and all of the fun stuff that I love.
What is your favorite thing to do in our parks and public lands?
Morgan: Recently I learned how to fish with a net in the traditional West African Way, and I learned how to do it in South Carolina. So I really love fishing and crabbing and shrimping to feed myself at the parks.
Vanessa: I rode my bike through Glacier National Park. And although I love hiking, riding your bike through a national park and through Banff, and to be able to see so much of it in slow motion, up close and personal in that way is probably my favorite.
What park have you yet to visit but is on your bucket list and why?
Morgan: This is hard because with GirlTrek, we’ve been to almost every single park, but I have not been to Acadia. And then internationally, I really wanna see the gorillas in Uganda or Rwanda. So those are my two answers.
Vanessa: I haven’t visited Olympic National Park in my home state of Washington, so I would love to visit there.
What are three must-haves you pack for a park visit?
Morgan: First of all, a car with a sunroof because parks are huge and I hate when I have to look out of the window to look at the top of the mountain. So that’s the first thing. Hiking sandals because I like to ground and I like my toes to be free, but I like stability. I climbed all the way up a volcano in sandals one time, so I really love that. And then any snack that’s peanut butter, I really love like having some protein in my backpack so I don’t get weary and hangry. So that’s, those are my three things.
Vanessa: Definitely snacks and good snacks. Like, I like a big meaty sandwich or something like that, pack my leftover dinner from the night before. I like to bring music. I’m one of those people on the trail. I love having music that I can listen to. And then, my GirlTREK shirt. I don’t like to go anywhere without it.
What is your favorite campfire activity?
Morgan: Singing. I’m a Girl Scout. I love to sing “I like to eat apples and bananas.” I like to sing all the Girl Scout songs. My least favorite is ghost stories. And this just happened like last year. Some adult, like mentors, were telling ghost stories at a campfire. I was like, this is so deeply inappropriate. I hate it.
Vanessa: Definitely, roasting marshmellows
Tent, camper, or cabin?
Morgan: It used to be a tent until I tented in Serengeti and there’s a lion outside my tent. So now it’s definitely a cabin. It’s definitely a cabin. I’m a cabin kind of girl.
Vanessa: I haven’t done a camper yet, which would be dreamy for me. So I’m gonna say camper, so I can call that in
Hiking with or without trekking poles?
Morgan: Without
Vanessa: Without
And what is your favorite trail snack?
Morgan: Electrolytes and peanut butter. I need all the energy. I can’t get, I’m so outta shape. It’s so hard. I just did an 11 k hike. I felt like the whole thing was uphill and I was like, “my God, I get out here.” But I have never regretted a hike. But boy, in the middle of it, you’re like, man, this, I’m really pushing myself to the limit. So electrolytes.
Vanessa: I love candy, like a blow pop, lollipop, or some licorice.
What is the favorite animal sighting that you’ve had?
Morgan: It’s so funny because Tootsie is an animal, is this is my question. And I told you about this earlier before we started recording. It was seen buffalo in Yellowstone National Park and my cockapoo was trying to protect us from the buffalo. And we were like, this is not a good size match up here, dear. So we had to put an end to that really quickly. But the buffalo, I never imagined they were that big and we even saw grizzly that time. But the buffalo were just so majestic and beautiful and spiritual.
Vanessa: So every time we drive into Estes Park with a group of women, there’s elk that are around the campus. And there’s something about seeing a woman who’s not seeing a wild animal like that outside and watching her see it for the first time and how close they come up.
What is your favorite sound in the parks?
Morgan: Oh, this is so cliche and so true. A babbling brook
Vanessa: You know how like often, in the distance, you can hear when some of the birds take flight? And then the we the leaves ruffle or something like that, and you’re not sure if it’s the wind or it’s the bird. It’s like that kind of distance sound.
What is the greatest gift the parks give to us?
Morgan: Timelessness. I think the ability to just lose yourself to take the deepest pause, the deepest inhale the deepest exhales to just be lost for a little bit.
Vanessa: I feel like they get us up close and personal with God and like with the most natural of natural wonders, which for me in this way, take away any doubt that I have, that there’s like something so much bigger than me in the universe has had their hand on all of the things that I’m looking at.
Episode Transcript
What do nature, movement and community all have in common? They improve overall health and wellbeing. My guest today started an organization using those three things to motivate, move, and mobilize, saving lives all around the world. Join me as we learn more about Girl Trek. I’m your host, Missy Rentz, and this is the Parks podcast.
Missy:
I am joined, by Morgan Dixon. And Vanessa. Renee. They are the co-founders of Girl Trek, Morgan, and Vanessa. Welcome to the Parks podcast.
Morgan:
thank you for having me.
Missy:
I am so excited to chat with the both of you about Girl Trek, but I’m gonna start with some stats and some research I did on Girl Trek, and then we’ll get into who you. Girl Trek was started by the two of you in 2010. It currently has 1,371,776 members. That is 7% of the population of African-American women. The mission is to unleash a mass movement for health justice with a goal of extending the life expectancy of black women by 10 years. In 10 years and some of the benefits of the program, 61% of the black women who are members lost weight. 90% experienced fewer symptoms of depression. 28 percent were prescribed less medication that year than previous years. 59% walked daily at life-saving levels, which according to the CDC, is five days per week for 30 minutes, and 56% have sustained a habit of daily walking for more than a year. I’ve talked to you all several times in the past six months, and I feel like I leave every conversation with chills, with some tears in my eyes and just great motivation for the work that you guys are doing. Tell me about Girl Trek. What is Girl Trek?
Morgan:
GirlTrek is I think first and foremost, it’s a community of women who are trying to practice self-care out loud and who are holding one another accountable to doing the same thing. And that community just scaled it scaled from two friends who were trying to do that and like break every single. Statistic in our own families, every single mindset that had made us want to work harder faster and try to break that in order to survive. And we tried to do that in a joyful way and we inspired other people to join us. And so now a million women later, we have a big, bold community of women who are doing that out loud. So that’s what GirlTrek is to me. Vanessa, how would you describe it? I was thinking about Harriet Tubman. And we often say that we are the Harriets of our communities, and so I think about GirlTrek as a million women who are walking their way to freedom and health and bringing their friends and their families along with them.
Missy:
I was just scouring your Instagram. I I’m usually quite motivated by it, and there was this wonderful video about self-care and about how self-care started as in more of a necessity in the civil, during the civil rights movement. And I thought that was, it was so much great education for me that it has become so commercialized and it does feel like you all are peeling that onion away and going back to the core and reminding people of the necessities of self-care.
Vanessa:
Yeah,
Morgan:
particular video came from Afro-Punk, and it’s a good point that we’ve been just like working in solidity. Ready to create like a new narrative and a new concept of what it means to take care in a world where we are worth our labor. And and that, that work didn’t begin with us. It didn’t begin with our partners all across spectrums, including folks that we admire like Afro-Punk. And it doesn’t it. It started generations ago with people like Audrey Lorde who said, self-care is not like indulgent, it’s act of political warfare. And she understood what what it meant to be someone who was expected to be a laborer, and someone who decided to take rest at all costs. And so we’re following in that and we’ve spoken to all sorts of powerful women from that generation who continued to inspire us. I just read a book by Alice Walker just on my vacation two weeks ago, and she spoke, she, she was speaking about it more eloquently than I could ever dare speak about it. And so I don’t think that we’ve started this movement, but we certainly have continued to be pioneers in self-care.
Missy:
I actually just was reading a little bit about her she talked about the importance of rest and taking time for the recuperation, which was really motivating to me. You have, you call your, I dunno if it’s your mission or your structure, like this joy and justice agenda, which is incredibly inspiring. And while I think when I was first introduced to you, it was about the community and walking. There is a lot that you all are working on. Vanessa, maybe if you could just share a little bit about the different components and facets that are maybe trickle downs from the original core message.
Vanessa:
Yeah the original message, which is still fundamentally a core part of who we are and what we say we are doing was to not ask permission to save our own lives, to start walking in the direction of life. And we were a behavior. Change organization focused on getting women to take their first steps off the couch and to start walking. And over 10 years we’ve galvanized over the million women who are doing that. And those women have started to lead in their communities. And those women have also started to tell us that, can’t out walk the systems that are killing us and we have a collective power in our constituency now. And there is an opportunity for us to organize around things that would not only increase our life expectancy, but improve our quality of life. And so the agenda is an outcome of being in community with the women who we’ve been working with and walking with. And it is an agenda that addresses the 10, I think, most essential pain points for women in the 10 opportunities for us to create the families and the neighborhoods that we’ve deserve.
Missy:
And maybe can we talk a little bit about some of those 10 points? You can probably rattle them off the top of your head. But I know you do a great job of listing them on the website because it’s like chronic disease and food sovereignty and things
Vanessa:
The first one is we want healthy bodies because we wanna live and we want our temples to be cared for. And so that’s where the walking comes in. And then we want healthy minds because there is a mental health crisis in this world and it is really hard to stay in the light. We want healthy families because we need that unit, and that unit was systematically destroyed in an intentional way in this country. We want land and power and economic freedom. Things that, again, like we come from a long legacy, I think, of freedom fighters who have been asking for those things. And so I don’t think it’s necessarily that all of the points are new. But I think that it is a new lens by which we are asking for the things. I think there’s also, we want here for our caregivers and we want the next generation to lead yeah.
Missy:
Yeah, it’s beautiful. The whole mission of increasing the life expectancy by 10 years, in 10 years. I think that was a little bit shocking to me that there was such a discrepancy in the life expectancy of black women. What inspired you guys to start the organization?
Morgan:
Whoa. I think it’s, I’m 47, I think it’s 46 years of inspiration every day I feel inspired to start the organization. It’s a hard question. It feels to me like what, inspires you to want to live, so for me, I think about my Aunt Joyce’s home as she’s washing dishes. I think about my Aunt Melva rolling down hills when I was a kid. I think about being the first one to go to college in my family and how proud I felt. And how big of a responsibility that felt like. And then just specifically the organization. I I come from a humble beginning and so I started studying business in college and I worked for an investment banking firm, and I, that’s where I met Vanessa. And then I immediately knew that that Making wealth was not my calling necessarily, but I needed to do something else. So I joined the Teaching Corps, teach for America, and I started teaching. And as I was teaching I was so sad to talk about, I was an American history teacher. I was so sad to be talking about like manifest destiny and like the American Revolution and all these things when I saw like calorie deficit in the eyes of my kids and deep exhaustion and just. The effects of environmental pollution, the effects of sound pollution. I mean, It’s just like I was teaching in Newark, New Jersey and there was just a lot going on and it felt like, dang, we just need to go outside for a little bit. We just need to take a walk. And my friend Diana and I started taking our girls hiking and it’s why we’re called Girl Trek actually, because it was a club to take the girls outside and to get them walking. And there was a girl named India and her mom one time came into my office and was like. What you been telling my daughter? She’s trying to make me get new stuff at the grocery store. She trying. She was like, fussing. And I was like, you’re right ma’am. I’m sorry. That is disrespectful. You should come on the walks with us. That’s what I remember telling India’s mom and throughout all of this was having conversations with Vanessa, who’s been my friend for over 20 years and just talking about this. And Vanessa was working at CNN and she had an employee match program and she used her donation to support this new idea called GirlTrek. And several conversations, several years later, we were applying for grants to try to get a million of India’s moms walking. And so that is the. That’s the way that it started and that was my inspiration for it really. I remember I heard a statistic that half of black girls, this was way back in 2000, probably eight or nine. I don’t remember. I was teaching though, and I remember I read a statistic that half of black girls would get diabetes if diet and levels of activity remain constant. And I just couldn’t fathom that half of the girls in my class would get diabetes. Nothing that I taught seemed as important as solving for that to me.
Missy:
Yeah. That’s beautiful. And Vanessa, what inspired you?
Vanessa:
There was a lot of personal inspiration for me around having experienced a lot of early death, up close and personal with the women in my lives and really understanding what that loss meant and what the gap of their loss and them not being there, what was left behind and how we had to pull it together as a family. And I wanted more years for my grandmother who passed away and for my aunties and I wanted more life for myself. And they were able to experience because they were laboring physically and they were laboring emotionally and they were laboring mentally. And I believed. Morgan when she said that statistic that half of black girls may get diabetes, and I was living it and experiencing it and really believed that physical activity and especially physical activity outside. I didn’t know all of the kind of science behind it that I know now, but I knew even for my own self as a little girl, that walking saved my life, that getting out of the house, that when it was very chaotic and taking a walk in my Seattle neighborhood and looking at the houses and dreaming of what was happening in there and imagining that could be me and that I could move myself out of the situation I was in and into a different situation. Like walking had always been my savior. I grew up in a neighborhood where I walked to school by myself since I was like kindergarten through, I finished high school. And so I just was inspired by that possibilities of what it would mean if we could all be outside walking.
Missy:
And you guys have been around for almost 15 years, I think I have that date, right? Yeah. Almost 15 years. And you’ve impacted so many lives. So this is a two part question. What was the original reception to the concept in 2010? And then how has it evolved? I, because it’s evolved a lot in the six months that I’ve known you.
Morgan:
I don’t, I think the original reception is like, depending on who was the audience, right? I think I can remember very early audiences being like, why are you all building a movement? What does Harriet Tubman have to do with it? This feels so irrelevant and so dated and, and I think not spicy and flashy enough. I think this is at the advent of both social media and reality television. So I think some of the reception was probably like just skeptical about who we were and what we were saying. And then on the flip side, the reception with. Our target audience, which was black women. It felt it still feels like that if you, we, if we could just get audience with the women, they really, they get it at a cellular level. It almost, I think the reaction to a lot of women felt like relief that somebody was finally speaking to them speaking for them, speaking about them, speaking with them and naming things that hadn’t been named before. And that the solution was so accessible. It wasn’t something that was like outside of their locus of control to be able to grab onto and gravitate to. And so really the reception, I think amongst the women, is the reason why we were able to grow, because more than anything, it’s been word, it’s been a word of mouth growth, movement. It’s been a, it’s been a sister to sister, cousin to cousin, church member to church member. This thing is really working for me and I have to tell somebody else, or it’s been a, I’m doing it myself and all the other people around me see it and they’re like, whoa, what is going on with you? Because your light is so bright and they just gravitate towards it.
Missy:
We connected because, I have this passion and desire to introduce people to the outdoors and being in parks for mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing. And then somebody said, you need to talk to them. They’re doing it. They do things in parks, they spend time outside. And for so many. Trying something new is the hardest part and just that first step. Or Morgan, you talked about getting off the couch, that’s hard for people to think about. What do you tell women or how do you inspire them? What, What is that tipping point that you’re finding gets people to consider a new program and overcome whatever obstacles prevent them?
Vanessa:
That’s a good question.
Morgan:
Yeah, I think it’s a really good question. Early on we had a slogan, we had shirts that said, let’s talk more walk. Just that’s all I used to say. And it’s this notion of of showing, not telling. And, it’s interesting we were, do you know Fannie Lou Hamer? Do you know who
Missy:
No.
Morgan:
Yeah. I’m so excited to talk about her. Fannie Tamer was outta Mississippi and she was one of the civil rights leaders she was responsible for getting like 60,000 people registered to vote in Mississippi, and she became, just a showstopper in the Civil Rights Movement. When she gave a hearing at the Democratic Convention, she gave a or she gave not a hearing, she gave a recount of her activism and she had been arrested registering people to vote and had been beaten in a JA jail cell. And when she came, she had such like tremoring authenticity in her voice that she commanded the attention of the world. And in fact the the president at the time interrupted her interview because it was so compelling with a fake press conference. So this is Fannie Lou Hamer, and she to us, we, we’ve tried to unearth these everyday women who’ve done extraordinary things so that we can inspire women to do something extraordinary. Which on some days all of us can account to as getting off the couch. It feels extraordinary. And so we use these great American women to, to demonstrate the capacity of everyday women. And so we were um, honoring Fannie Lou Ham Hamer on what would’ve been her 100th birthday. So we gathered, a small group, I think it was probably like maybe a hundred people in her hometown, this tiny little town in Sunflower County. And we wanted to lay Aretha Flowers at her grave site. We paid the local uncle to come and cut the grass because we don’t do a great job honoring our heroes in America. And we wanted to make sure we did that. And as we were walking through the street a woman like saw us from her window. She leaned over to her mother and she said, oh my God, my tribe is here. She recognized our, what we call superhero blue shirts, we wear every, that’s how you recognize a girl Trekker on the street. She’s usually wearing a superhero blue shirt. And she said, oh my God, my tribe is here. She had been walking with Girl Trek in solidarity with us and Fannie Lou Hamer’s, tiny little Mississippi hometown by herself for years, and she didn’t know we, she didn’t read that newsletter. She didn’t know we were coming, and she saw a sea of blue shirts out. She went and grabbed her shirt from her bottom drawer ran out. I remember she had on these reddish orange pants. She ran out and joined us and was telling us her story as we’re walking to Fannie Lou Hamer’s grave. I say that because that woman is how we’re getting people off the couch, because if they see her enough times in her neighborhood wearing this uniform, walking, transforming her own life, she eventually will have two. And we say two as a crew in Girl Trek. And our core mission is to inspire as many crews as we can where two or three are gathered is what my mom says is a scripture in the Bible is really where love lives. It’s where God lives. And so if we can have these kind of micro communities, these support networks, the civic infrastructure of. Groups of women who walk in their neighborhoods. Not only do the neighborhoods get safer, not only do you the do the women feel like they belong, but they are also adding up to seven years of life expectancy to their lives. And so that is our change theory, and that’s how we get people off the couch to having a habit of daily walking. I.
Missy:
I experienced Girl Trek unbeknownst to me until we met. And I think the power and the of the motivating like community. I was in Lake Mead in Nevada and I was on this. A hike and I hurt, I, every part of my body hurt, my skin hurt on this hike. And I came across the blue shirts and I didn’t realize it until earlier. You told me about the blue shirts. And this woman in the group, saw me and just sorta put her arm around me and just started talking to me. And in a way that I was like, oh my God, I can do this. Like it, it was so empowering. And there was something about, being on the periphery of the group just for the hike up the hill, that, that motivated me. And it was really special. That was a connection that I, I mean, honestly, I’ve like never felt something like that out on a trail, which is, which is a really special motivating factor when you, when you meet someone.
Morgan:
Yeah, that peripheral effect is significant. It’s the effect that like, it’s not just the women who are walking with us, but it’s like what’s happening with their families and their children and their communities when they’re out. And we have so many people who’ve had experiences like yours. Some of them have been the proximate real, like somebody really put their arm around me. Some of it has been, I heard the laughter coming down the street. Some of it has been, I read the story some, but it’s like that kind of like the proximity to what has happened has been almost as powerful as the direct kind of recruitment and connection and support of women. And I think for me, that’s what, when I think about what a movement is, it’s like fundamentally what makes Girl Trek a movement.
Missy:
And you mentioned the light earlier and that resonates with me because I do think that girl trekker have a light that is really appealing. And Girl Trek loves the parks. You all have worked with the parks and you host walks in parks. What role do parks and public lands and nature play in your mission?
Morgan:
A big role. I think they’re really essential in so many different ways. First of all, so many of us live disconnected from nature and disconnected from the earth and in urban kind of centers that are, noise polluted and hot. And we don’t have enough opportunity to connect with ourselves and connect with nature in that way. And introducing women to the parks has always been a big part of our mission. And giving women, especially women who’ve never had an experience in the park, their first experience, and I. Often when we say like parks in that regard, we’re talking about like national parks, but there’s also like the state parks and the local parks. And it’s really giving women the understanding that they have ownership over those spaces, that they have a right to be in those spaces and that those spaces are healing. Like There is real scientific healing that is happening in those places. So yeah, we’ve been partnering with the National Park Service for almost as long as I think we’ve been around. We’ve done many different partnerships with them. We’ve held the largest gathering of black women in a national park multiple years at Estes Park. We’ve held something called a summer trek series where we’ve gone from Yosemite to Shenandoah to Great Smoky Mountains. We’ve trained almost a hundred women to be with a partnership with the Sierra Club to be outdoor trip leaders. And there’s something called the Adventure Squad. And then we’ve just, personally, I think both of us have uplifted the parks in our own journeys and had so many other women who’ve uplifted the parks in their own journeys and stories. Missy I was so moved by your story of coming in contact with a group of girl checkers and them stopping to make sure you were okay and hugging you and I feel so grateful for that story because we our founding core value is one of what we call radical welcome.
Missy:
Hmm.
Morgan:
want people to feel radically welcomed into our community. And I wanna just speak about what, like an elephant in the room. Like why would we try and rally a million African American women? And in this world where we’re talking a lot about inclusion and we’re talking a lot about diversity, and we’re talking a lot about equity. Why would that be a mission? And you started off with this segment of talking about some of the outcomes of Girl Trek, how we’ve reversed chronic disease, the issue that that we are confronted with. And it has something to do with the parks issue that you were talking about is that black women are dying faster and at higher rates than any other group of people in America from preventable diseases, from stress that leads to chronic disease, that leads to the number one killer, which is heart disease. And so most black women are dying from broken hearts, from actual heart disease, and that comes from chronic generational and stress and labor and intense labor. And so here we are one generation later, not only getting back into the outdoors, but going to the highest peaks is something we should celebrate as a nation. Healing, it’s something we should celebrate as a nation. We don’t ask for permission to save our lives. So we’re inspiring one another to take up space and to go into the parks and to treat them as a sanctuaries that we know they are because we’ve always been connected to nature. And like Vanessa worked really hard to get policy passed so that even the registration fee to the park was not prohibitive for children public school children across America. We not only trained outdoor trip leaders in the certification of the Sierra Club, but we also made it culturally relevant. We, We said, oh black people are suffering disproportionately from asthma because of environmental toxins. So if there’s an asthma attack on the trail as well as a bear attack, then let’s make sure that our leaders are prepared for both. So there’s some kind of structural things that we’ve been doing to make sure that we’re prepared. Those are a few. Vanessa, did you have others?
Vanessa:
Yeah, I actually, so much of what you said Morgan resonated I think that we have to diversify that community of people so that other people can see themselves feel safe feel welcomed in in the ways that girl GirlTrek radically welcomes people.
Missy:
It’s so important, and I think, it’s always been. And yet it’s super important now as, as well for us to, to all be working together to do this. How can people get involved in Girl Trek?
Vanessa:
The best thing about Girl Trick is that you can get involved by lacing up your sneakers, walking outside of your front door, taking a walk for 30 minutes and experiencing what it feels like. We definitely wanna know that you’ve done it. And so we ask every woman to be counted, every person to be counted and take the actual pledge so that we can know that they’re a part of the community. We ask them to be in solidarity with us and wear superhero blues. So that we can spot each other out there in the communities. And then we ask women to organize their own friends and family so that they can come on the journey with them. It’s it’s really simple. Yeah. What do you say, Morgan?
Morgan:
Yeah, I would say everyone listening to this, if you feel inspired or you have questions to share this podcast and start conversations is one way.’cause I think we just have to talk. More. I think if there’s a black woman who you love and you want to live long, as long as women of other races in this country to send this to them and and let them know that they’re invited. You, anyone listening to this is radically welcome to support us
Vanessa:
um,
Morgan:
both financially, particularly at this time where it is we are defining ourselves as Americans and what the American dream is, and we have to really support what we believe in and really do that in concert together and on one accord. And then I think, I think as we see each other in the streets one of the things we do, we have something called the Trek Code, which is like seven rules. If you’re a girl trekker, this is what we do. And one of them is called single file and smile. And so you see a big group of girl reers and they collapse in a single file line. They wave and they say, hi, neighbor. There’s something so powerful about greeting one another. And so certainly if you see a girl checker in the street, please say hello, and I promise you, you will get the same warm welcome that Missy got. Back as we walk to heal ourselves and reduce what I think is the clearest measure of justice, which is life expectancy and make sure that we can all live and our daughters can all live. What what I want to talk about more in this country, the American dream, which is to live our healthiest, most fulfilled life. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There’s that American history teacher coming back.
Missy:
Morgan, you’re such a teacher to me, so you can’t get out of that. So do you have to be a black woman to participate as a trekker?
Morgan:
You have to be a black woman to help us achieve our mission, which is to increase the life expectancy of black women by 10 years and 10 years. You definitely don’t have to be a black woman to support our mission. And so we need all of the support we can in the ways that I described.
Missy:
You can go to girl trek.com or girl trek.org to learn more. Or I’ll also list it on the episode notes on the parks podcast.com. What’s next for Girl Trek?
Morgan:
Oh, we’re all taking a Sister’s keeper pledge.
Missy:
What
Morgan:
We have three. I, so we have th we, for 10 years we’ve been serving our community and we’ve gotten really clear about what the problem is we’re solving, and we call them the three, i’s the letter I, right? Three i’s it’s inactivity. We’re not moving enough. It’s isolation that so many people are suffering from chronic loneliness. And loneliness is deadlier than cigarette smoking. And then there’s injustice, all the systems around us that are making us sick and make Girl Trek necessary in the first place. And so we’re solving for isolation. We’re asking people to take the My Sister’s Keeper pledge, which is to ask one woman in your life. Every month to go for a walk. And we have a 10 month season. So if you do that over the 10 month season, you will have invited 10 women to walk with you over the course of the year. So anyone can do that anywhere. You can go to girl trek.org, take the Sisters Keeper pledge. And that is, and we will trust you. Pink. I’m a Girl Scout girl. Scouter two. We do like all my honor girl Scouts and Girl Trek believe in trusting women. so we trust you. You take the commitment and then you just, it’s easy. You just invite someone to go for a walk. That’s it. So that’s our initiative for the summer.
Vanessa:
We have very cool sisters, keepers, bracelets just like friendship bracelets, but they’re very cool for women who take the pledge.
Missy:
And they can just find that on the website.
Vanessa:
Yes,
Missy:
Wonderful. And then the other thing that I have seen through your socials is the self-care school. What is that program?
Vanessa:
it’s wow. It’s so much more than a program. It’s. It is a curriculum, it’s a body of knowledge. It is instructional. So it’s an, it’s weekly instruction for people based on the 10 point agenda. It is an audio recording five days a week, 30 minutes a day, so five audio recordings each week that people can download and listen to while they walk, and they can learn 50 essential skills to save their own lives.
Missy:
And where can people find more information about that? Or how do they sign up for it? How does that work?
Vanessa:
They can sign up for it@myselfcareschool.com. They can preview all of the curriculum and all of the different weeks. There’s thousands of women who are starting the journey right now thousands who’ve already completed it. Every single week that you complete a week, you earn a four mother badge because every single week is dedicated to a different for mother and a different point in the agenda. And so you can collect all of your badges and you can collect digital ones and you can collect real ones.
Missy:
That’s super cool. It, that’s your Girl Scouts coming in. When I saw it, that’s immediately what I thought was collecting my Girl Scout batches.
Morgan:
It is. I had a dream. I’m gonna tell a long time ago that we had some badges, girl Scouts of America reached out to us a long time ago and said, could we do a Girl Trek badge for their scouts? We should. And we were, we at the time were not, we were focused on mothers and so didn’t follow through with that opportunity, but that’s a dream. So definitely inspired by scouting days for sure. So wherever you find your too you can also find self-care school. It’s a 10 week walking classroom so you can learn all the skills you need to take care of yourself.
Missy:
Amazing. And I wanna go back to like how to get involved in Girl Trek. If I am listening to this or see any posts and I wanna join is a c does a community already exist near me that I would join in? Am I starting a new one? Do I just go on the website and you’ll take care of me from there? What? What’s that? Back to basic step.
Morgan:
Love that question. You go onto girl trek.org, you sign up, you take the pledge. And the pledge is that you will walk out of your front door 30 minutes a day, five days a week, and take a walk wherever you are, and we help you to do that. So that’s the simplest way to describe what Girl Trek is, know that you don’t have to join a group, but how we help you to do that becomes very robust support systems, right? So everything from our 10 week podcast, Self-Care School to the ability to go on social media, Facebook, find groups in your community to, we’re launching a mobile app later on this year that will allow you to find people like close to you in proximity to you to our field guide, which teaches you how to organize your community, your church, your sorority, your civic group, your neighborhood, your family to different campaigns that we do month over month to keep people inspired, like the Sisters Keeper Pledge that we were talking about. So there’s a lot of layers of support to events that we do all across the country. So we have a newsletter that we send right to your inbox after you sign up@girltrek.org that lists and curates the member experience for you so that you stay inspired.
Missy:
Love it. Super motivating Vanessa and Morgan. To end each episode, we do a speed round of questions. I would love to go through these with both of you, if you don’t mind. Morgan, we’ll start with you. What is your earliest park memory?
Morgan:
Ah, my earliest park memory is not a memory. My earliest park memory is being at the basketball court with my brother Kevin, and recently a girl tracker told me that she remembers me as a baby in the park in Wichita, Kansas, is with my big brother Kevin, which I think is illegal for him to have me propped up at the park as a baby. But that’s
Vanessa:
my,
Morgan:
first experience in the park. My, one of my most formative memories is being a camp counselor at Sly Park with Girl Scouts.
Missy:
Vanessa, what’s your earliest park memory?
Vanessa:
I grew up in Seattle, in the central district on 24th and Mercer, and at the end of the block is a park that has been there for at least 70 years. It’s the tiniest little neighborhood park with the tire swing. And literally I spent 80% of my childhood playing in that park, meeting the kids at that park. And so it’s really the little neighborhood park in my neighborhood. I think it’s called Frazier Park. And it’s literally this, like the plot size of one house. The community decided we were gonna make that into a park, and so every time I even go back home, now I drive down the street. It’s there, and I’m just like, wow. My mom played at that park when she was little. I played at that park and the park is still there.
Missy:
Morgan, what made you love the parks,
Morgan:
The sound of swing sets.
Missy:
Vanessa? What made you love the parks?
Vanessa:
I love a good summit. Like I love, once I started really getting into good hikes and then being able to like hike up to a summit and see a really beautiful view, it really just enthralled me
Missy:
Morgan, what’s your favorite thing about parks?
Morgan:
That it feels like church feels like a sanctuary.
Missy:
Vanessa, what is your favorite thing about Parks
Vanessa:
Something about wearing hiking boots. Like I like what you wear when you go to the park. There’s something about the equipment in and all of the fun stuff that I love.
Missy:
Morgan, what’s your favorite thing to do at a park?
Morgan:
Recently I learned how to fish with a net in the traditional West African Way, and I learned how to do it in South Carolina. And so I really love fishing and crabbing and shrimping to feed myself at the parks. I.
Missy:
Vanessa, what’s your favorite thing to do at a park?
Vanessa:
I rode my bike through Glacier National Park and although I love hiking, riding your bike through a national park and getting and through Banff, and to be able to see so much of it on in slow motion, up close and personal in that way is probably my favorite.
Missy:
Morgan, what park have you yet to visit, but it’s on your bucket list. And why?
Morgan:
This is hard because with Girl Trek, we’ve been to almost every single park, but I have not been to Acadia. And then internationally I really wanna see the gorillas in Uganda or Rwanda. So those are my two answers. But Maine, yeah.
Missy:
Vanessa, what park have you yet to visit? But it’s on your bucket list. And why?
Vanessa:
I haven’t visited Olympic National Park in my home state of Washington, so I would love to visit there.
Missy:
Morgan, what are three must-haves you pack for a park visit?
Morgan:
First of all, a car with a sunroof because parks are huge and I hate when I have to look out of the window to look at the top of the mountain. So that’s the first thing. Hiking sandals because I like to ground and I like my toes to be free, but I like stability. I climbed all the way up a volcano in sandals one time, so I really love that. And then any snack that’s peanut butter, I really love like having some protein in my backpack so I don’t get weary and hangry. So that’s, those are my three things.
Missy:
Vanessa, what are three must-haves you pack for a park visit?
Vanessa:
Definitely snacks and good snacks. Like I like a big meaty sandwich or something like that in pack my leftover dinner from the night before. I like to bring music. I’m one of those people on the trail. I love having music that I can listen to. And then, um. my girl truck shirt usually like I just, I don’t like to go anywhere without it.
Missy:
Morgan, what’s your favorite campfire activity?
Morgan:
Singing. I’m a Girl Scout. I love to sing. I like to eat apples and bananas. I like to sing all the Girl Scout songs.
Missy:
I’ve, the one I love is I’ve got something in my pocket. It belongs across my face.
Missy Rentz:
I love it too. I love it too. I hate my, my, my least favorite is ghost stories. And this just happened like last year. Some adult, like mentors were telling ghost stories at a campfire. I was like, this is so deeply inappropriate. I hate it. Yeah.
Missy:
Vanessa, what’s your favorite campfire activity?
Vanessa:
definitely roasting marshmallows.
Missy:
Morgan. Are you going in a tent, camper, or cabin?
Morgan:
It used to be a tent until I tented in Serengeti and there’s a lion outside my tent. So now it’s definitely a cabin. It’s definitely a cabin. I’m a cabin kind of girl.
Missy:
Vanessa? Tent camper or Cabin
Vanessa:
I haven’t done a camper yet, which would be dreamy for me. So I’m gonna say camper, so I can call that in
Missy:
Morgan? Are you hiking with or without trucking poles?
Morgan:
Without, without.
Missy:
Vanessa, are you hiking with or without trucking poles?
Vanessa:
without.
Missy:
Morgan, what’s your favorite trail snack?
Morgan:
Electrolytes and peanut butter. I need all the energy. I can’t get, I’m so outta shape. It’s so hard. I love, I just did an 11 k hike. I felt like the whole thing was uphill on Saturday and I was like, my God, I get out here. But when you’re out I have never regretted a hike. But boy, in the middle of it, you’re like, man, this, I’m really pushing myself to the limit. So electrolytes.
Missy:
Vanessa, what’s your favorite trail snack?
Vanessa:
I love candy, like a blow pop, lollipop, or some licorice.
Missy:
Morgan, what’s your favorite? Sorry, Tootsie. Tootsie wants to weigh in on this. Morgan, what’s your favorite animal sighting?
Morgan:
It’s so funny because Tootsie is an animal, is this is my question. And I told you about this earlier before we started recording. It was seen buffalo in Yellowstone National Park and my cockapoo was trying to protect us from the buffalo. And we were like, this is not a good size match up here, dear. So we had to put an end to that really quickly. But the buffalo, I never imagined they were that big and we even saw grizzly that time. But the buffalo were just so majestic and beautiful and spiritual.
Missy:
Vanessa, what’s your favorite animal sighting.
Vanessa:
I wanna say they’re moose. Those are moose at the YMCA, right? Morgan at the in, when we first drive in. Elk.
Morgan:
They’re elk. Yes. So every time we drive into Estes Park with a group of women, there’s elk that are around the campus. And there’s something about seeing a woman who’s not seeing a wild animal like that outside and watching her see it for the first time and how close they come up. So elk,
Missy:
Morgan, what’s your favorite sound in the park?
Morgan:
Oh, this is so cliche and so true. A babbling brook
Missy:
Vanessa, what’s your favorite sound in the park?
Vanessa:
you know how like often the distance you can hear when some of the birds take flight, it’s and then the we the leaves ruffle or something like that, and you’re not sure if it’s the wind or it’s the bird. It’s like that kind of distance sound.
Missy:
Morgan? What’s the greatest gift that the parks give to us?
Morgan:
timelessness. I think the ability to just lose yourself to take the deepest pause, the deepest inhale the deepest exhales to just be lost for a little bit
Missy:
Vanessa, what’s the greatest gift that the parks give to us?
Vanessa:
I feel like they get us up close and personal with God and like with the most natural of natural wonders, which for me in this way, take away any doubt that I have, that there’s like something so much bigger than me in the universe has had their hand on all of the things that I’m looking at.
Missy:
Morgan and Vanessa, thank you so much for being part of the episode for teaching us about Girl Trek, for inspiring me and educating me on so many things in life. And for your girl Trekker, for wrapping their arms around me and letting me know I could do it in a really difficult time.
Vanessa:
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I’ve really appreciated you and always your questions your passion for the parks and your intention to detail and learning about Girl Trek and following and your passion for just staying connected. So thank you. I
Morgan:
agree. Thank you so much, Missy.
Missy:
Thank you. That’s it for today’s episode. Until next time, we’ll see you in the parks.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please be sure to like and share on your favorite podcast platform. Music for the parks podcast is performed and produced by Porter Hardy. For more information, please follow us on Instagram at the parks podcast. Or visit our website@theparkspodcast.com.