Closing the Adventure Gap

This summer, we’ve spent many days as educators running around Green Mountain Audubon Center’s day camps—pockets overflowing with river rocks,“looky-no-touchy” bins full of pollywogs, our sunscreen sweated off by ten in the morning. These small touchpoints with nature are so important to the development of our campers and there’s real research behind why. Kids who spend time learning outdoors tend to do better in school, feel more confident, and develop their character (Ardoin et al.).

The caveat is that access to the outdoors isn’t equal. Even as the country grows more diverse, outdoor participation remains heavily white, middle-class, and able-bodied (Jones et al.). This is called the Adventure Gap, present even in an outdoor state like Vermont. So we set out to talk to a few of Green Mountain Audubon Center’s partners in environmental education. We spoke with Partners in Adventure, North Branch Nature Center, Rock Point Commons, and Crow’s Path to learn what Vermont organizations have tried to increase inclusion. What’s worked?

Barriers to Access

Outdoor education facilities face countless obstacles to improving accessibility. Across our interviews, the same barriers came up again and again.

One of the more prevalent issues is physical barriers. Facility access can make or break a program. Restrooms are a good example: as Joan Martin from Partners in Adventure put it, “If there’s not appropriate restroom facilities, then the outdoor place is knocked off our list.” But some obstacles are smaller and less obvious. "Say there’s a stick in the path and this person can’t get out of their wheelchair and move it,” Joan said, “that’s a barrier.”

Emotional barriers can be just as limiting. It can feel intimidating entering nature when you don't see yourself represented. Luis Gonzalez of North Branch Nature Center put it directly: “Part of the challenge is that most of our member base and most of the community around here is majority white.” Even when an event is open to the public, the turnout of individuals isn’t always representative of all communities.

Financial barriers also affect participants and outdoor leaders alike. Most accommodations require funding, and many organizations rely on grants and funding streams that can be unpredictable. Without a sustainable funding base, even a successful program can disappear. 
 
What’s Working

Most of the organizations we spoke with have directly implemented something to address mobility issues. “We purchase [gear] through grants,” Joan said of Partners in Adventure, “strollers that have fat wheels that make it easier… Strollers are lighter than a wheelchair, so that will make it easier.” While actually changing the structure of the trail is often outside of their control, using different equipment can turn terrain that would otherwise end a visit into something manageable.

North Branch Nature Center built a universal access trail — a trail that is wider, more firm, and covered in “rock shavings that are conducive for a wheelchair travelling through,” Luis shared. Rock Point Commons had their own solutions for the problem. “We have a lot of offerings that are more accessible for folks with limited mobility… that are more observation-based,” Kelly said. Rather than changing the trails themselves, they changed the structure of the programming.  

Financial barriers get addressed just as directly. Rock Point Commons keeps much of its programming and trails free through grant funds and uses a sliding scale with a no-cost option for fee-based programs. Crow’s Path battles this barrier by building  financial aid directly into their yearly budget. Some families receive a small discount on tuition while others may receive up to 90 percent off.

For other disabilities, organizations pointed to different solutions. Partners in Adventure discussed time as its own kind of barrier— participants being unable to mentally prepare for the schedule. To help with this, they often use a visual sequence: “This is where we’re going. This is what it’s going to look like when we get there,” Joan explained. They also like to keep the content itself simple and hands-on rather than overly academic. It’s “this is how you catch a bug” or “how you use binoculars.”

North Branch Nature Center has built for a wide range of disabilities as well. Visitors are able to scan QR code audio guides posted on placards along trails. For visitors who process information best through touch, Luis explained that they provide tables of objects—wings, taxidermic birds—paired with an explanation of the field markings used to identify a species.

Barriers rooted in race and identity don’t have one single fix, and the steps towards access are a bit more complicated. A trend across our interviews was visual representation, affinity programming built for a specific demographic, and trust that can spread through communities. North Branch utilizes these, building programs explicitly for specific communities such as events aimed at BIPOC visitors and Pride Hikes co-hosted with Audubon Vermont. Luis attributes the success of these programs to building strong relationships. That starts with choosing program facilitators from those communities.

Crow’s Path seems to use a version of the same principle. “What has worked for our program, just in enrollment and community, is word of mouth and concentric circles of community,” Ross explained. “For the families of color that are in the program, if they are feeling welcomed and grounded and safe, then that word of mouth and trust and community building will go out through them and their circles.”

Closing Thoughts

Of the organizations we spoke with, none described this work as finished. Leaders of these organizations are often working with limited budgets, limited resources, and problems largely outside of their control.

It’s also easy for this kind of work to fall into a trap of performative action. New mission statements and updated language can sound good but doesn’t always ensure much change in reality. Real structural change has to be sustainable and community-minded, and the actual work itself tends to lag behind the language meant to represent it. Ross at Crow’s Path shared this sentiment, saying that change without action can cause harm if it amounts to empty promises. From our interviews, it's clear that many organizations across Vermont are doing the opposite. They are doing real work to shift barriers to access. None of these solutions fix the Adventure Gap on its own, but that hasn’t stopped these organizations from taking one step at a time to narrow it.