Gear. (Photo: Philly Gear Library)

Camping under the stars is enchanting, says Robin Roberts, the founder of Philly Gear Library. And she wants everybody to feel that magic. 

But what if you don’t have anything to sleep on? What lighting do you bring? How do you stay warm… or cool? What do you pack everything in?

Roberts is the founder of the Philly Gear Library, in its second year, which was created to provide outdoor camping and other recreational gear for free or low-cost rentals, along with training to teach folks how to use it.

Its main mission is to eliminate barriers to gear and make camping, backpacking, and other outdoor activities accessible to everyone, especially marginalized and minority groups. 

“The Philly Gear Library really exists so that we can have people of all walks of life, all abilities to be out into nature spaces,” says Roberts. 

Starting the Philly Gear Library 

Roberts grew up in Iowa, going on camping trips with her parents and sister, and remembers sleeping out in open fields with real fondness. As her kids got older, she wanted to bring some of those memories to life for them while growing up in Philadelphia. 

After a family camping trip to the “Mighty Five” in Utah right before her daughter went off to college, she knew she wanted more people, especially folks who hadn’t historically been in camping or other outdoor spaces, to get the same kinds of experiences she and her family had. 

They stayed in hotels and camping sites, but the most memorable moments were the times they were all outside, waking up in nature. 

Roberts’ husband was apprehensive at first, bringing up the history of danger and violence that Black folks have had outside. But Roberts saw how the benefits outweighed the fears. 

When she got home, she wanted to find community with others who share her appreciation for outdoor spaces. She joined Outdoor Afro, became one of their outdoor leaders, and started hosting orientations on gear and proper usage. 

As she became more involved in leading, she observed the barriers that keep more Black and brown people from camping.  

She had a particularly bad experience camping with her and her daughter on Ocracoke Island in North Carolina, where nearby campers had multiple flags out, including a huge Confederate flag. 

She talked to the law enforcement ranger about why the Confederate flag felt like a threat to her and the history of white supremacy and violence associated with the flag. The conversations ended with the rangers saying that the other campers have a right to fly the flag, and they would tell the other campers not to trespass on each other’s sites. 

As Roberts and her daughter were the only Black folks at the site, she says the situation felt extremely unsafe. But thankfully, the night and the next morning ended without incident. 

They loved the natural space and its beauty, but the social dynamics were so threatening to both of them that they felt uneasy. She ended up writing a letter to the head of the Department of the Interior and received a response, but she wanted to do more. 

After that experience, she spoke with Outdoor Afro leaders and began to figure out the next steps. 

She connected with the Outdoors Empowered Network, a national organization that helps local leaders and organizations create gear libraries in their specific communities, and they were able to assist her in starting a gear library in Philadelphia. It has been two years since, and she has partnered with other organizations, such as Let’s Go Outdoors, and other outdoor leaders in the community to help provide outdoor gear to both younger and older people in Philadelphia.

Her overall goal is always to make people feel invited and comfortable in outdoor spaces that may be new to them. Through her work, she hopes to show folks that it isn’t as hard as they may think to be prepared and have good experiences in nature. 

Barriers to accessibility – gatekeeping and gear 

Roberts says she sees a lot of gatekeeping when it comes to outdoor recreation, which she defines as people who know or have access to information about a thing and hold it to themselves. 

One definition of gatekeeping is “to control access to something, or determine the legitimacy of people’s claims to a particular status, by unilaterally imposing criteria for acceptance.”

“What I’m seeing as gatekeeping is even information about how and where to go camping. There are people who do that, and they’ll just say, well, you just go on this website and you just get a campground, and you just, you know, you just do it. And that’s gatekeeping. Because what people are asking you to do is sort of walk with them,” says Roberts. 

Roberts has often observed people out in parks and trails surveilling and not welcoming different individuals, and not providing them with information about the space. 

The other significant barrier she identified, as mentioned, was the lack of gear and its proper use.

If people were only going to use the gear once or twice a year, it was a large investment. She saw a need for gear accessibility, especially among Black and brown folks who may face a wealth gap or work in service industries with not much time off. 

“If you want to take the time to learn something new, we should have the ability to do that,” says Roberts. And she  wants to eliminate the barrier of gear: ownership, maintenance, and storage, to give folks a chance to try a new thing and see what happens. 

She gives her daughter as an example. She has decided to go to school for environmental science because of the camping experiences she has had with her family.

Getting outside is healthy, and enjoying nature is for everyone

Erika Durham is a CAT scan technician, and in recent years, she wanted to get out, get healthier, and engage in more outdoor activities, such as camping (which she had never done before) and hiking. 

She signed up for a camping trip with Hike + Heal last summer, and they suggested taking a training with Roberts on gear orientation.

She attended a gear orientation for camping at Blue Bell Park, hosted by Roberts and her daughter Simone. They provided information on sleeping gear, tents, lighting, food, and everything else you could bring on a camping trip. Durham said she even provided everyone with an information packet that she still uses to this day. 

Durham says the orientation gave her the confidence she needed to go on the camping trip feeling fully prepared. 

She considers the service the Philly Gear Library provides invaluable. Durham now hikes at least once weekly and looks forward to other outdoor trips. She feels that time spent outdoors helps her mental and physical health. 

“I work in health care, so I’m constantly around people that are sick, many people that are dying, and I tend to take on a lot of that feeling. So being in nature, it just feels comforting. It feels like I’m doing something for myself. I’m nurturing myself. I’m releasing some toxic energy. I’ve been holding on to the fresh air, the trees, the birds, you know, the sounds, all of that,” said Durham. 

And with the confidence she has gotten from her first camping trip and subsequent outdoor activities, she now feels comfortable going out and following trails in the Wissahickon alone. 

Roberts agrees that being out in nature is essential to our health and to show us the bigger picture. 

“We’re in a place where we realize just how built up our existence is and how we don’t necessarily need all of that, and how much of it is detrimental to us. Much of the world that we’ve built up around ourselves, the structures that we have in place are unnecessary and harmful to us,” she said.

Roberts points out that an important part of the Philly Gear Library is that it is designed for everyone who may feel like outdoor activities might not be for them. 

That includes people who don’t speak English, people with disabilities, and queer and non-binary folks. And it includes people who may worship differently. 

She wants to help create a safe space for anyone to be outdoors, so she will provide interpreters for orientations, she has equipment for people in wheelchairs to transfer nearly independently, and this year she is including the creation of group camping expeditions with Philly Gear Library for folks who may not feel safe camping on their own. 

She knows that there continue to be “othering” and unwelcoming moments in outdoor spaces. However, she insists on taking up space because she says she knows how important nature is to her own well-being and to everyone’s well-being.

In fact, she and her daughter returned to Ocracoke Island the next year after the traumatic incident occurred to them.

“The assistant superintendent (at Ocracoke) just turned to me and she was like, why’d you come back? And I said, because this is our space too. This is land that we can enjoy and that we can be a part of. This is our land. Why wouldn’t I come back?”

For more information on the Philly Gear Library, you can visit their website and sign up for news and updates.