(soft music) (upbeat music) - In "Upon Further Review", we take an older episode of Mossback's Northwest Series and update what we heard from viewers and what we learned after it was broadcast.

Here to join the conversation is Alison Mariella Désir host of the Cascade PBS series, "Out and Back".

Welcome to the show.

- Thank you so much.

I'm honored to be here.

- So, Alison, we're going back to an episode that we aired in November of 2023 about a woman known as quote, "The Mother of the Pacific Crest Trail", Catherine Montgomery.

She left a remarkable Northwest legacy.

Take a look.

Catherine Montgomery hailed from Prince Edward Island in Canada and came to the northwest via Nebraska and California.

She was a school teacher who in 1899, joined the faculty of the new Whatcom Normal School, a state funded teachers academy that later became Western Washington University in Bellingham.

The single Ms. Montgomery was a civic dynamo.

In addition to teaching, she ran an arts and lectures cultural program for the Bellingham community.

She was a founder of the Progressive Literary and Fraternal Club Women's Group devoted to changing the world.

It featured some prominent women.

They included the club's President Francis Axtel, who later became one of the first two women elected to the Washington legislature.

She defined the PLF Club in 1904 saying it must not only do good literary work, but must be a potential factor in molding public opinion and must be interested in the sociological and humanitarian development of the community.

Another member of the club was Ella Higginson, a prominent author who ran Axtel successful legislative campaign and later became Washington's poet laureate.

The club itself was a member of the Washington Federation of Women's Clubs, which became a voice for women's political and cultural power in the civic sphere, and one that gained clout as women regained the right to vote in Washington in 1910.

Catherine Montgomery was an advocate for women's suffrage, prohibition, and other causes.

Right after the show aired, I received an email from journalist Ron Judd, who had written a graduate thesis on Montgomery and college politics at Western Washington University in Bellingham.

He pointed to his research in which a faculty member during Montgomery's time remembered Montgomery expressing some exceedingly racist thoughts at a public meeting.

I can say my immediate response was extreme disappointment.

I felt our segment was trying to bring more public notice to an early advocate of expanding the reach of outdoors to more people.

But then again, I probably shouldn't have been surprised.

Your show is dedicated to diversifying access to the outdoors.

The outdoor and environmental movement has an exclusionary past, doesn't it, Alison?

- Absolutely, the history of the outdoors is one full of exclusion that has led to the nature gap that persists in communities of color today.

(soft music) One of the stories that I share in my show is about a black man, Armand Lucas, who is an avid birder and now has started his own community for BIPOC birders called Urban Woods Collective.

Now, when people think of birding, they think of John James Audubon, whose name is almost synonymous with birds.

But Audubon was a complex and troubling character.

Even by the standards of his day.

He enslaved black people, wrote critically about emancipation.

He stole human remains and sent the skulls to a colleague who used them to assert that whites were superior to non-whites.

- In early outing groups like the Mountaineers in Washington and the Basamas in Oregon were pretty much all white back in the day.

Participants had to have money, the equipment, leisure time, supportive peers to engage in things like hiking, outdoor recreation, mountain climbing back in the early 1900s.

Women though were heavily involved also as women clubs became more important social and advocacy organizations, they were segregated early on as well.

- Yeah, the idea that white women who had to fight to prove their worth to white men were themselves upholding systems of oppression is a tough pill to swallow.

The same is true when we think of the suffrage movement that was happening at roughly around the same time period as the founding of the mountaineers and the Masamas.

The 19th Amendment ratified in 1920 in the United States allowed white women the right to vote.

Women of color would not receive that right until many years later.

Black women, not until 1964.

Historical figures are complex and often incoherent.

It makes it difficult to reconcile how someone like Catherine Montgomery, who did so much good, could at the same time harbor so much prejudice.

The history of the outdoors is full of examples like that.

The architects of our national parks, our institutions, our sanctuaries.

They may have been ahead of their time in many ways, but not when it comes to racism, unfortunately.

(soft music) - So what have you learned doing "Out and Back"?

- Despite all the obstacles, people of color have participated in all aspects of the outdoors since time immemorial.

What I love about my show is that I get to tell these often hidden, erased stories and share them with the world.

(soft music) In season two of my show, I get to meet with the founder of the Buffalo Soldiers of Seattle, a group dedicated to preserving and uplifting the history of the Buffalo soldiers.

The Buffalo soldiers, of course, were six all African American United States army regiments formed during the 19th century to serve on the American frontier.

The Buffalo Soldiers were also among the first protectors of the national parks, including Sequoia and Yosemite in the 19th and 20th centuries.

BIPOC people, we have created a path for ourselves in the outdoors, really against all odds.

- Alison, thanks for giving us your perspective for forging paths for greater diversity in the outdoors.

- You're welcome.

(soft music)