Sometimes, one small act can open up an entire world. For Evelynn Escobar, that act was hiking up to Griffith Observatory with her aunt at age 10. It was the first time she’d really seen nature as something to step into, not just something around her. “That’s when I saw the hiking trails and it was just like, wow — nature,” she said in an interview. The moment sparked something she couldn’t yet name, but it planted a seed that would change everything.
Evelynn grew up in Northern Virginia, just minutes from a state park she never visited. The idea of hiking there alone didn’t feel safe, much less welcoming. “People were not inviting me to go out there to do that,” she said. Still, she spent plenty of time in the woods and creeks near home, spaces that connected her to nature even if no one called it that. “I didn’t feel scared in there,” she remembered. “Unconsciously, I was having that connection.”
Photo by Yasmina Antonio.
It wasn’t until a cross-country road trip in her early 20s that she truly saw how exclusive outdoor culture could be. At Zion National Park in Utah, she felt the gaze of strangers who made it clear: You don’t belong here. That tension lit a fire. As someone with Indigenous roots on both sides, Evelynn knew she belonged. “Black people are Indigenous to a place,” she said. “And my ancestry on the side that is native to Guatemala — we are literally people of the sun.” That legacy, and her lived experience as a Black and Guatemalan woman, grounds everything she builds. “We are people of this earth,” she said. “Healing that connection with the land is so pivotal to our own healing experience and also to our connection to our ancestors.”
Reconnecting to the earth eventually inspired Evelyn to share the love. In 2017, she posted on Twitter (now X): “Hey y’all, I’m going to start a hiking club. Does anyone want to come?” Ten people did. With that, Hike Clerb was born. Since then, what started as one small meet-up has grown into a national nonprofit with programs in L.A., New York, and the Bay Area. Today, Hike Clerb hosts outdoor events, youth programs, wellness retreats, and community hikes, all grounded in a mission to center Black and brown women and nonbinary folks in the outdoors.
The pandemic brought new momentum. “In 2020, white people discovered Black people, and everybody discovered nature,” Evelynn joked. As the world shut down, Hike Clerb became a space of refuge, healing, and connection for the community and for Evelynn herself.
But leading that space also came with a cost. In building Hike Clerb, Evelynn often put the needs of others before her own. Motherhood forced her to rethink that. During her first pregnancy, she severed ties with her mother and found herself grieving while stepping into a new life. Nature became her sanctuary. “I still have a mother, and that mother is actually nature,” she said. “She’s always holding me.” It’s where she learned to release, to reset, and to be held — sometimes by rivers, sometimes by trees.
Now, Evelynn brings her daughter, who’s nearing four, everywhere. “She was already getting all of that exposure in the womb,” she said. “She’s essentially my co-founder at this point.” Hike Clerb events welcome families, loud toddlers, strollers, and the beautiful mess of real life. “We live in a world that has segmented us so much from allowing children to be the little humans that they are, but here they are accepted and they’re welcomed.”
It’s a full-circle moment. Evelynn was once the kid who entered a space the world told her wasn’t meant for her. Now, she’s creating spaces where people of color are not only welcome but deeply rooted. Where healing happens in motion, in community, and in the quiet wisdom of the land.
In Evelynn’s world, wholeness is wellness, and everyone belongs.
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