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As Intrepid launches its newest sequence of Lively-ism adventures – designed to mix journey with advocacy – we meet considered one of its visitor journey leaders earlier than she heads to Yosemite.
‘The mixture of drag and local weather, they appear ridiculous, no?’ says drag queen and local weather activist Pattie Gonia in her 2024 TED Discuss, wearing a pink Barbie-esque ‘trashion’ costume constructed from thrifted bathe curtains and upcycled flamingo pool inflatables.
‘I assumed so too,’ she confesses to an viewers rippling with laughter. ‘However then in 2018 on a backpacking journey in the course of my quarter-life disaster, I placed on a pair of six-inch heels and strutted the paths for the primary time as Pattie Gonia’.
Proper there on the Continental Divide Path in Colorado, a brand new identification was born. The video of photographer and queer group organiser Wyn Wiley remodeled as Pattie went viral as she danced about, consuming path snacks and asserting herself because the ‘first queen’ of the outside scene.
Utilizing visibility to broaden inclusivity
However why, you would possibly ask, did drag look like a pure conduit for local weather activism – or a ‘megaphone’, as Pattie places it, to precise her views? As a result of too usually huge points like environmentalism come shrouded in downbeat, destructive language devoid of pleasure. And pleasure and humour are what drag does greatest – making it the best antidote.
So, in an effort to defuse defeatism, Pattie went about spreading the glitter-scattered gospel, utilizing the enjoyable and flamboyant creativity of drag to get the message throughout.
‘Pleasure is a type of resistance,’ says Pattie. ‘After I’m on the market in full drag, mountaineering boots and heels, I’m not simply making an announcement. I’m exhibiting up precisely as I’m in areas that haven’t all the time welcomed folks like me. That visibility issues. It says: “we belong right here too”. It invitations folks to reimagine who the outside is for and what activism can seem like’.
The upbeat strategy labored, with Pattie since gathering a group of 1.5m followers on Instagram, co-founding the Outdoorist Oath to result in higher BIPOC and queer inclusion within the outdoor, and elevating greater than USD 2.5 million for local weather motion. This included a 100-mile trek in full drag in 2025 that raised USD 1 million for eight non-profits alone, to broaden entry and make the outside extra equitable for all.
She’s additionally been recognised by TIME Journal’s 2025 TIME100 Creators Checklist, lauded by Nationwide Geographic as considered one of its 33 ‘brokers of change’ – alongside precise Patagonia founder, Yvon Chouinard – and is at the moment touring with a drag present that mixes her key cornerstones of humour, local weather motion and social justice.
Changing into an unintentional activist
‘I wasn’t attempting to be an activist,’ Pattie explains. ‘I simply needed to exist in nature precisely as I’m. It truthfully began out as pleasure. Me, in drag, mountaineering within the backcountry attempting to be happy in a world that always advised me to shrink’.
A key problem that Pattie has been vocal about lately is the proposed USD 1 billion reduce to the Nationwide Park Service (NPS) in the US, which risked the closure – or discount of providers – at 350 historic websites, in addition to job losses and cuts to key cultural programmes designed to carry Indigenous historical past and group tales to life.
For now, as of January 2026, the cuts have been rejected by Congress, but it surely nonetheless poses a menace that would nonetheless reemerge in future budgets.
‘What’s at stake with the Nationwide Park Service cuts is a lot extra than simply mountaineering trails and scenic views,’ says Pattie. ‘After we reduce funding, we’re not simply reducing jobs. We’re reducing entry, truth-telling and alternative.’
We speak in regards to the observe of ‘snitch indicators’ – authorities officers placing up indicators asking guests to report if the historical past being advised at sure websites is ‘too destructive’.
Pattie speaks passionately in regards to the topic, saying we shouldn’t cease speaking about slavery at Harriet Tubman’s web site in New York, the place she fought for civil rights and acted as a key determine within the Underground Railroad motion to assist enslaved folks escape from the American South to the free states within the north and Canada. And we shouldn’t sanitise the reality at Manzanar in California, considered one of ten American focus camps, the place Japanese-People have been incarcerated throughout World Struggle II.
‘No, ma’am. That’s not historical past. That’s erasure,’ she says. ‘These areas belong to everybody and which means everybody’s tales need to be advised – the attractive and the brutal. If we erase historical past, we erase the folks it impacted. And that’s precisely why now’s the time to battle – not only for the land, however for the reality that lives on it.’
Celebrating the local weather motion
So, as Intrepid rolls out a brand new assortment of Lively-ism journeys – designed to mix journey with advocacy – Pattie was clearly a pure alternative to steer considered one of 4 curated adventures to US Nationwide Parks, together with fellow activists Wawa Gatheru (aka Black Lady Environmentalist), local weather campaigner Michael Mezzatesta and Leah Thomas (aka Inexperienced Lady Leah).
‘These Lively-ism journeys matter,’ she says. ‘They’re not nearly visiting lovely locations – they’re about understanding what’s at stake and studying methods to take motion. For me, what began as a private journey turned a mission as a result of being out in these locations modified me. If you expertise these landscapes firsthand, it doesn’t simply create recollections; it creates accountability.’
Her enjoyable, informative model of speaking critical messaging leaves me in little doubt that Pattie shall be taking to the paths of Yosemite with the identical joyful zest for all times that’s underpinned each six-inch step of her journey since she was born within the backcountry in 2018.
Pattie agrees: ‘We have now to have fun the local weather motion. We have now to celebration. We deserve greater than doom and gloom… As a result of that is the one planet with a Beyonce on it.’
The way you develop into an outdoor activist too
Though Pattie’s journey may be bought out, you’ll be able to nonetheless be part of one of many different thought-leaders on an Lively-ism journey. However even for those who can’t, she has some phrases of knowledge for a way you can also transfer via the world with objective and pizzazz.
‘If you wish to make an influence, begin native, begin loud and begin with love. You don’t must summit a mountain to make a distinction. Volunteer at a neighborhood park. Share the tales of communities being erased from the outside. Signal the petitions. Donate for those who can…’
‘But additionally: carry somebody with you. Particularly somebody who’s by no means felt welcome in these areas earlier than. That’s how we modify the face of the outside: not simply via coverage, however via presence. That’s how actions develop.’
Advocate for our wild areas by exploring Intrepid’s newest drop of Lively-ism journeys at the moment.
Pictures: images by Claire S Burke, Mike Fernandez, Evan Benally Atwood and Karen Obrist.
