Flores, Flautas, and an Invitation Outside
On a recent Saturday morning, a small group gathered at Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve for a “Flores y Flautas” hike along the spine of the Peninsula. The trail was only two miles or so, but crested at the top of a gentle hill from which the gaggle of hikers could see Mount Diablo, Mount Tam, the Santa Cruz Mountains, and a sparkle of Bay. The poppies and lupins were showing their faces. “We had a lot of first-time visitors to that preserve,” says Aurora Cortes, who led the event. “They were all just in awe.”
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Looking at plants at Sunol Wilderness Preserve at a recent Latino Outdoors event. Photo: Latino Outdoors
Cortes is the Bay Area regional coordinator for Latino Outdoors, a national organization built on the premise that the outdoors belong to everyone. Access to nature begins with an open gate, but Latino Outdoors, founded in the Bay Area in 2013, extends something more meaningful: an invitation to come along. A self-described nature nerd, Cortes stopped the group often to explain the medicinal and traditional uses of the wildflowers they passed. At the end of the hike, everyone unfolded picnic blankets and chatted and ate chicken flautas together; nobody was in a hurry to leave.
Latino Outdoors organizes hikes, fishing trips, camping, and family-friendly caminatas across the full sweep of the Bay Area. Events are mostly led by volunteers and are shaped by their personalities. Cortes tells her volunteers to make events they’d actually want to attend. “It should just feel like an outing where you’re inviting your friends to come join you,” she says. Cortes’s hikes tend to be family-friendly; she brings her toddler. Another volunteer specializes in long, challenging hikes. One does queer caminatas. One is really into fishing. The result is a calendar that’s eclectic and community-driven: bilingual, multigenerational, and free of charge.
Arts and crafts activities at Sunol Wilderness Preserve. Photo: Latino Outdoors
Behind afternoons of good food and flowers is a broader theory of change. By removing barriers to outdoor access and helping participants build a personal relationship with nature, Latino Outdoors cultivates a more diverse conservation community — one better prepared to care for and advocate for public lands under growing pressure from fire, drought, and development.
The Bay Area, with its singular ecological variety, is good terrain for this. “You can be along the coast, on the beach, in a meadow, or you can be under redwood trees,” she says. “All in one trail.” She has a particular weakness for redwoods— Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park, El Corte de Madera, the little groves full of banana slugs she stumbles on unexpectedly. “You enter a whole different little world when you enter a redwood grove,” she said. “Even the lighting changes. There’s a different hue.”
In that other world, connection comes easily. “When you’re out in nature, you’re less stressed, you’re happier, so you’re more open to conversations and being vulnerable,” she says. “I think that’s why there’s been so many beautiful relationships that have been brought to life because of being outside in nature together.” Event organizers always ask the group where everybody’s coming from, “and some people learn that they’re neighbors,” says Cortes. “Then they want to start carpooling to future events together.”
Upcoming Bay Area events, including a Mother’s Day hike and a birding outing in June, can be found here.
