By EDWARD ORTIZ / Sacramento Bee
Carl Costas Special to The Bee
It’s a bracing 49 degrees, and a biting wind whips across Lake Natoma as Xico Gonzalez orders two shivering Met Sacramento High School students to put kayaks into the water.
Gonzalez barks out orders for the two to use their oars as they make their way slowly across the still lake. One of those is 18-year-old Elena Lopez, who has kayaked before, but welcomes Gonzalez’s call to get Latino students like her out on the water.
Xico Gonzalez leads a group of Met High School students and others on a hiking and camping trip at Lake Winnemucca Blohm-Craig smiles as Gonzalez lends a hand during the recent outing. Dru Blohm-Craig, center, and Elena Lopez learn kayaking basics from Xico Gonzalez on Jan. 31 at Lake Natoma. Xico Gonzalez leads a group of Met High School students and others on a hiking and camping trip at Lake Winnemucca Blohm-Craig smiles as Gonzalez lends a hand during the recent outing.
Blohm-Craig smiles as Gonzalez lends a hand during the recent outing. Carl Costas Special to The Bee
“When you paddle back late, there’s sometimes a hard current to paddle against, so it’s a big challenge,” she said. “We were out a long time and part of it was sitting on the shore just talking about school and being outdoors.”
It wasn’t long ago, only five years to be exact, that Gonzalez was a novice to kayaks, paddles and hiking trails. Now he’s helping other young Latinos discover those same pleasures as part of a coordinated effort to bring more diversity to outdoor recreation areas and encourage more environmental awareness among young Latinos.
To date, Gonzalez, a teacher at the Met Sacramento charter school, has led more than 40 trips to the outdoors for students. He chronicles each trip on a website he created called “Xicano in the Wilderness.” Each outing offers plenty of photos of high school students in the mountains or by rivers, standing behind Gonzalez, in selfie smile mode.
“Becoming politically aware about environmental issues is an important offshoot of participating in the outdoors,” he said.
It’s a telling example of how some urban Latinos are changing their relationship to such areas, and how federal and state agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service are courting them.
The goal, for Gonzalez and the agencies, is to raise the low usage rates among Latinos of California’s ample recreation spots. Read more..