Bringing the Community Together Through Outdoor Adventures with Felipe Vieyra

In this day and age of technological breakthroughs, everyone would agree that it has its impact. One of the activities that people who go through this detox can engage in is exploring the great outdoors like hiking, mountain climbing, or trekking. But, what are the other things that these activities bring into the community? Oso Adventure Meals Co-Founder Felipe Vieyra delves into bringing people from different colors together through going outdoor activities and adventures complemented with delicious adventure meals. Their mission is to provide outdoor food and beverage with uniquely delicious dehydrated meals They are actively working to create an outdoor culture in which BIPOC feels included, safe, and engaged. As a Black and Latino-owned business, Oso Adventure Meals is dedicated to creating a more just, equitable, and sustainable America. To learn more about what they do, listen to this podcast on Actions Antidote! --- Listen to the podcast here: Bringing the Community Together Through Outdoor Adventures with Felipe Vieyra Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, we're going to talk about the intersection of culture, adventure, and close encounters with wildlife with Oso Adventure Meals founder, Felipe Vierya. --- Felipe, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me, Stephen. Really excited to dive into this conversation. Definitely. Now, these are some very interesting topics and one thing that I love to always identify out here in this podcast is ways to think outside the box and ways to think about things a little bit differently. And so, you were on a backpacking trip of sorts when you came up with the idea for Oso Adventure Meals. That's right. That's right. It was two years ago, right outside of Leadville, Colorado, and I had gotten into backpacking so it wasn’t my first time out in the backcountry but it was the first time for one of my best friends, he had never gone backpacking but he loved the outdoors. We decided to go backpacking and we did Jasper Lake Trail, I believe it's called, and so it was super fun. It was definitely a journey that set us up for an even longer journey of entrepreneurship and food and culture and all the things that you named. Yeah, for sure, and so most people go on backpacking trips, especially, it's your first time, it sounds like it wasn't your first time but it was your friend's first time and you're just really focused on some of the basic necessities of life that we often take for granted, like you have to pump the water to get fresh water, you have to set up the tent in every spot to get your shelter and make sure that you get in before the thunderstorms happen, depending on what time of year it is. At the time, though, you were coming up with ideas for a whole new business. It's funny, though, because it was few mishaps. First off, it was like later in the summer too so it was a little — or in the fall, I mean. It was a little like it was a bit of a gamble getting out there and we also started on the trail late, we ended up going to Leadville and stopping for a beer, had — Oh, wow. I forgot the brewery and we ended up stopping for beer and stayed there a little too long and so we got on the trail a little late. It was also a very steep trail. At some point, I remember grabbing my headlamp and my extra one, me putting one on and handing the other one to my friend because we were hiking in the middle of the night. Oh, wow. Yeah, trying to make it to the top and it was his first time so he was like a little anxious. He's like, “Oh, there's gonna be a mountain lion right around the corner. This is never ending,” and so it was definitely an adventurous experience, but I feel like that's what life is about. We finally make it to the top, we pitch our tents, and we're both exhausted and hungry. We sit down after pitching up our tents, boiled some water and I had some Legacy Mountain House backpacking food, I believe it was beef stroganoff. It wasn't my first foray into backcountry meals. It was his, though, and so he was like, “What is this? This is so bland. Is this all you brought for us and this is all you have to give us after this like exhausting 15-mile hike in the middle of the dark?” and so, just sitting there, though, we just started talking about the importance of food for us growing up and our abuelita’s cooking and just like what food means for us as folks of color and then also too like what being in the outdoors means for us as well as two men of color from low-income backgrounds and it got us having a really good conversation about, again, food culture and just like what does it mean to claim space in the outdoors. Yeah, for sure, and then so your community has not always been represented as much in the outdoor community. What's the background behind that? Is it mostly about the low income and that it’s mostly accessible only to richer people or is it mostly about the racial ethnic aspect of it? Yeah, that's a great question. It's a mix of a few things. For us, it did start with representation.Share on X I think it did start with “Are we visible in the outdoors?” and, it's funny, in the last few weeks, we've been doing a lot of like — we just hired a marketing consultant and we've been diving into our pitch deck and materials and such and she was like, “You know how hard it is to find stock pictures of kids of color in the outdoors?” Oh, wow. She’s like, “It's non-existent,” and so I think that just gives an example of like representation is an issue. It's also historically been a combination of economic inequality, legalized segregation, and other forms of historical present day over covert racial inequities that has perpetuated a diversity gap in the outdoors. From economic policies, employment discrimination, unequal access to quality education, it's just created this inaccessibility to the outdoors and green spaces. For example, a lot of communities of color are far from access to mountains. Redlining had a lot to do with that too. So it's a combination. It's a combination of policy, of access, of representation, of economic barriers to the outdoors. Although some people who are from, say, a quite wealthy background might see a backpacking trip or even a camping trip is a relatively inexpensive activity and it is compared to, say, golfing or equestrian events, it still takes access to a vehicle to drive up to the mountains, that vehicle has to be a four-wheel drive to get to a lot of places you want to and you have to have the time to say, “I'm not gonna work today, I'm gonna spend,” as I did earlier this year, “three days up in the mountains,” just whatever, building tents, backpacking, you're not earning any money then. I think you hit it on the nail, like cost of camping gear, there's entrance fees, lack of vacation days, unpaid leave, and other factors make it difficult for families to participate in the outdoor recreation space, particularly BIPOC individuals who are more likely to face a lot of these economic barriers, and so I think you were spot on on that. Yeah. So you're at least in the place right now where you were able to go up to Leadville and just for the reference for anyone listening that doesn't live in Colorado, Leadville is pretty much right in the dead center of the state and it's also pretty high up, it's a town at 10,200 feet in elevation so it's pretty high up, there's a lot of stuff, but you were able to get there. What did you need to do to get to the point where you could comfortably take a couple of days and go in the mountains with your friends without having to worry about that that’s a day’s lost income or that's whatever? Yeah, that's a great question. And, by the way, for folks listening, Leadville’s beautiful and so I encourage folks to visit but I would say, for me, I think it's been a journey, for sure. I'm originally from Mexico and came to the States undocumented and grew up in northern Colorado in Fort Morgan, northeast plains of Colorado, pretty far away from mountains. Both of my parents worked at the meatpacking plants and worked overtime and so we as a family didn't really have time to experience the outdoors for many years. We went through a lot of hardships as a low-income family and eventually moved to Greeley, Colorado, and so it was when we were in Greeley that we would venture into the outdoors a bit more, Estes Park, which is another very beautiful place in Colorado, was a lot closer, it's like I would say like a 45-minute drive from Greeley and so we would drive from Greeley to Estes Park and just go and walk the Main Street and then go get Kentucky Fried Chicken, go picnic right next to the Big Thompson River and so that was my intro to the outdoors and it was such a place of comfort for my family, a time for us to really just build with each other, be with each other, given my parents were both working so much during the week and so — and even when I went to college, I went to the University of Denver and I was around so much wealth and privilege and I think I went snowboarding once in my four years and it was such a normal thing for people to do and it was really from a place of like I didn't have the money to be able to go snowboard, I didn't have the money for a snowboard, I didn't have the money for a pass. I also didn't have a vehicle that — I was driving an old-school Mustang that my mom had given me, which was terrible in the snow, and so I couldn't even imagine driving up I-70 in the middle of winter. And so I share that because it definitely has been a journey for me to be able to have the opportunity to say, “You know what, I'm gonna go to Leadville this weekend and go on a backpacking trip,” and so I think,...