Episode transcript: A home for Asian women with Camp Cosmos

PRE-ROLL: 

AD: This episode of Outside Voices was brought to life thanks to the support of our friends at Merrell. Merrell believes in sharing the simple power of being outside. They provide innovative, thoughtfully designed footwear and apparel products that enable anybody to pick up their gear and feel adventurous, confident, and ready to enjoy the outdoors.

Excerpts from Campfire Conversation

So to be able to be here with you all as an adult, I feel like I’m doing this for my inner child. I’m doing this for my hyphenated identity. I’m doing this to decolonize this land because my brown Asian skin deserves to be here too.

INTRO: 

Narration: You’re listening to Outside Voices Podcast. We’re using our Outside Voices to redefine what it means to spend time outside and connect to nature. I’m your host, Sarah Shimazaki. Let’s get started.

In early July of 2021, a woman named Cassandra slid into my DMs. This episode is most definitely a fruit, hopefully the first of many, that grew from the seeds of that initial conversation on Instagram. You see, Cassandra is one of the co-founders of The Cosmos, a home for Asian women, femmes, and nonbinary folks to care for themselves, their community, and the world. Alongside her co-founder Karen, Cassandra and Karen, both based in Brooklyn, New York, are building a beautiful community of tens of thousands of Asian American women both online and offline. 

As someone who identifies as an Asian woman, this episode really means a lot to me and while I couldn’t be there in New York, I was excited to be a small part of Camp Cosmos through this podcast. Cassandra and Karen formed Camp Cosmos as a way to bring people together in a way that felt safe during the pandemic, since all the offerings were outside. Coming off a traumatic year of increased anti-Asian hate, the hope was to allow Asian women to find spaces for fun, community, and healing in nature and also own our narratives around what “Camp” as a very American concept, means to many of us as we learn to accept and question our relationships to our American identity.

Over the course of a month, Camp Cosmos participants went hiking, kayaking, and finally camping. This episode highlights excerpts from their camping, or actually glamping, trip to Camp Rockaway at Fort Tilden or Munsee Lenape lands.

Intros

Hi there, I’m Na Li.

My name is Jamie.

I use she/her/hers as my pronouns

I am a second generation Asian American, Indian American

I am a queer Filipino Asian

I am a Chinese, Korean, and a proud Asian American

Narration: A couple of notes before we get into it: The bulk of this episode is from a group conversation that took place after breakfast on the last day of the camping trip. Cassandra and the four campers from the trip sat around a fire pit and chatted, reflecting on the weekend’s events and sharing appreciation for the space and for each other. As I mentioned, I sadly wasn’t able to join in-person, but as I listened back to the recording, I was struck by how beautifully the collective and supportive energy of this group shone through. And I’m excited that I get to share that energy with you all. I resonated with so much of what they said and just want to take a moment to extend gratitude to them for the opportunity to share their voices. For a space meant to be solely for Asian women, it’s incredibly gracious of them to allow all our listeners to listen in, so thank you!

Make sure to also note the gorgeous background sounds of nature, I didn’t even need to add music or anything, cause nature’s soundtrack truly has it all. Last, this episode does contain quite a bit of explicit language, including quite a few f-bombs, so if there’s anybody around who you’d rather not hear such language, I’d take a pause now and perhaps press that play button later when you’re alone.

Group conversation: Hi, everyone. Good morning. We had a pretty epic night last night, and I'm curious for everyone's reflections. What do these last 24 hours mean to you?

Narration: Okay, so before we get into those reflections, I wanted to take a moment to paint a little picture of what said 24 hours looked like. The Camp Cosmos’ glamping trip started with a Sunday car ride. Everyone met at the rental car center for the first time and drove in one car to Camp Rockaway-- out of 4 campers, only 1 had ever camped before. With feelings of excitement and joy in the air, the campers spent the day walking nearby trails, checking out the wildlife, touching trees, cooking, and playing at the beach. Though many of them had all just met, they expressed feeling surprisingly safe with each other.

Group conversation: I couldn't believe that I got to experience and exist in silence together with a group of people and feel, and hopefully you guys felt it too, simultaneously very comforting and no need to fill that silence. I was minding my own damn business, and I was like, oh, there's presence around me that's comforting. And no one felt the need to, like, fill the space. You could just read the room so clearly. And I think in Korean culture, I forgot what it's called. But there is a sense of collective trauma that makes people more empathetic, but then has turned into a culture where they can read the room very beautifully and be more in tune with other people's behaviors, actions and thoughts. And I felt that none of you felt the need to overextend yourself. You were just focusing on yourself, and I rarely find that everywhere you go. If you pause for more than 3 seconds, people tend to get flustered or stutter and to find the same level of like minded women around your same God damn age going through insecurities and being honest about your suffering.

Damn, this is what a community feels like. No spiritual trauma at a fake Church community, no sorority or fraternities in College where you're just desperate to find friends, no elementary, middle school friends where you're just seeing each other 10 hours a day. So you might as well make friends like, this is a by choice experience that all of you guys signed up for, and it just happened to be lit with a bunch of cool people who are very like minded and safe and that level of safety and inner piece, I felt I can't believe I saw all of that in, like, one day And that's going to carry over. I know feelings will last forever, but it's definitely going to carry over and be something to help ground when we go back to capitalism tomorrow for the next thing for today, but a profound sense of gratefulness today.

I felt like it was something I really really needed. I just want to literally be. I feel like I'm just kind of repeating myself, but I hope people listening to this will understand the essence of what I'm trying to say.

You know, we can't even, like, be ourselves. Like, there's stuff that came up. I think each one of you guys talked about how, like, feeling like, the weirdo. I remember one time in group therapy, I felt like some I feel like a weird in this world, but I felt in place in that space and I feel in place and can just be right here. There’s nothing wrong with being a weirdo at all. We just put that on ourselves, it sucks a lot. It’s good to be weird. It really is!

That feeling of no longer being the only one, or the only weird one, persisted even through moments of silence. After dinner on the first day, everyone decided to sit out on the sand at the beach together. The stars were slowly coming out and the full moon was bright-- it was the mid-autumn harvest moon, an important time of year celebrated in many Asian cultures. As the campers soaked in their natural surroundings and listened to the waves lapping on the shore, they enjoyed a notable period of comfortable and collective silence. 

I was allowing my body to sink up and rhythm with the moon, the tides, the current and the water and also sync up with your hearts. And that's what I felt when we were just sitting there in that row of, like, this is what it means to be in community. And I feel like we've lost it in urban life and industrialization of just how often are we actually in sync with each other in rhythm in the sense of, I don't know. We've lost, like, ritual as doing stuff, we're not being together, right?

there's something about being in nature with you all in that moment, it felt like all these cycles are aligning, like us being part of the universe us being part of each other there being a little bit of the stars in each of us, like, it all collapsed into oneness. And that moment felt both infinite and like a second at once. And it just reminded me like, I think that's why I love nature so much. And that's why I want to have more experiences being being around other, BIPOC especially other Asian women and Fem in her, like, cradle or in her arms, because it just made me feel so much less alone. You know, I've been really in my head about things in my own life or, like, caught up in the stress of, like, what's not happening yesterday. I could just focus on what is. And that was that was more than enough.

We're in this kind of transitional moment individually in our own lives, and nature helped facilitate a conversation. There was a sense of ease that did not feel force that did not feel difficult or hard. And there was a place of curiosity from everybody and listening from each person. But every person is able to either add to their perspective in a very kind and caring and nurturing way

Narration: Through Cassandra and Karen’s work at The Cosmos, they’ve met and spoken to countless Asian women in their community who feel like they don’t belong outdoors. We don’t feel represented, we don’t feel welcomed, we often feel invisible, like nobody wants to even try to understand who we are.

Group conversation:
I think it's a goddamn shame that people don't truly know or want to know the full magnitude of not just one Asian American experience, but how vast the spectrum so vast, that infinite

What do you think an Asian American experience in nature, like, the future of it could look like for you individually?

I think it's going out in groups and not feeling othered because even sitting here today, from an outsider's perspective, they're probably like, what are they all doing here? And I don't know if that's my whole projection of what we look like externally, because internally, I'm like, yeah, we're just hanging out. That's fine.

But a group of Asians usually is, like a tour guide or something together.

I always thought camping was a very culturally white thing. It's like people who already had a sense of stability and space and then can be able to have that ground to be able to connect with nature, go to any day exactly while other folks are surviving. It's like, why would I go and survive again and rough it out?

I didn’t grow up going outdoors really. My parents are Vietnamese refugees, and they lived in refugee camps for two years in Malaysia. And so in that experience, it's like when I think about it from that perspective, I understand why they can't see it. They can't look at a tent and feel anything other than fear or like, we thought we left that behind or they can't see living without running water or, you know, being around, being without protection or shelter from the outside world, being really traumatizing. And similar to Jamie, I also remember my sister and I begging to go camping, and they're like, you can move it in if you saw white people go or what was that watching honestly movies and seeing quintessential American families doing, you want things like he goes fishing, they go camping, parent trap. Obviously, that summer camp and the idea of your parents dropping you off to have fun for, like, three months, like somewhere without parental supervision. these were just things that felt so cool.

so to be able to be here with you all as an adult, I feel like I'm doing this for my inner child knowledge and talking about Intertel. So I'm doing this for my inner child

But I feel like I'm also doing this. Jamie said, like, for my hyphenated identity. I'm doing this to decolonize this land, because, like, my brown Asian ass skin like, deserves to be on here, too. And does it feel like you're removing that hyphen and emerging and becoming one? Yeah. I think 

Narration: A quick note, the hyphenated identity they are talking about refers to the hyphen between Asian and American. It’s this third space many immigrants or descendants of immigrants find ourselves struggling within, where we never feel completely one or the other-- not completely Asian, not completely American, and not completely sure that Asian hyphen American truly encapsulates the different cultures and worlds we walk through.

Group conversation:

Just defining your identity outside of what was given to you.

It does. It feels radical to be here in my Asian body, like in this land. 

I don't know if y'all ever did Kumon growing up here on. You know, how you get. You know how you get stars that build up to a road map, and the when you get to the end of the roadmap, you get a toy or something. I feel like I just got another star are on my outdoors road app, and I'm on my way building up to I want to eventually go to a National Park. I've never been to a National Park. Want to go like, camping? Camping? Like, not even at a glamping site, like in a real tent. So, like, now these things feel more possible because I'm like, I did this, you know, and exposure

I'm just racking up data next time. I'm like, now I know, bring a sleeping bag because it's like, 50 degrees outside is hella cold

Narration: If you’re a regular listener of our podcast, you’ll know that Outside Voices is not just about encouraging new experiences outside, but also about recognizing the ways we are already connected to nature through cultural practices.

Group conversation:

In our culture, too. If you go back to our roots has such ties to nature that I want to get back into that from our cultural ancestry versus the colonized approach of nature and tourism and what’s cute. But I do like glamping just because baby steps to boundaries

Like, exposure therapy.

Exposure therapy!

Yeah, because it was cold. It was cold. Well, you know what? Learn to bring more layers. Exactly.

Invest in those right brands

So thank you, Merrell

Thank you, Merrell

I love that our shoes helped a lot for the hike, for sure.

Narration: We’ll dig deeper into cultural practices connected to nature, but first, speaking of Merrell, which supported Camps Cosmos, they are one of our valued brand partners who helped bring this episode to life. We have a quick message from an additional sponsor who also supported this episode. We’ll be right back.

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Narration: And we’re back

Camp Cosmos participant: Once upon a time, there was a period of time in the Earth, when there were twelve sons, and it was so powerful and strong, and it just scorched the Earth and destroyed everything and all the crops. And the people were just miserable.

Narration: Hear those waves in the background? We’re listening in on a conversation from that night on the beach, when the group sat under the full moon. It was the mid-autumn festival, which, as I mentioned, is celebrated in many Asian cultures. One of the participants shared a story behind the festival, of Chang’e, the moon goddess. 

Camp Cosmos participant: And Chang’e is the woman, I don't know the guy's name. I think it's Han. He was just a hero. And he shot down all the sun. And apparently the city for something mystical was very grateful. And they gave him an elixir to give him everlasting life. And him Chang’e were going to take it together and long lasting love. Some theives came around and said, Fuck this. You can't have nice things. And they tried to take it from him. But Chang’e devoted to her love, which I think is beautiful. But she went about it wrong, drank the whole thing herself and just started floating to the moon, because that is where it's like, natural gravitational pull was going.

And so they say that the shape of the moon just kind of like, holds her. And also there's a Jade rabbit up there keeping her company. So she's not too lonely. And then he dies because he lives his whole life as a human. And they have that long distance love forever. And every time we look at the moon, we thank her and him for basically saving the Earth from being scorched to death. And she is a very moon goddess, special figure who basically saved all of us. Wow. Thank you. My tattoo is named after changing them. Really? That's so beautiful. I try to name everything but the mid-autumn fesitval You don't know why we have all these traditions. And I guess with the language barrier, my parents like, oh, it's just because we do it. But I'm tired of just kind of, like, doing things because we do it. So I was like, let me buy this children book made for Asian American kids.

So I was like, let me buy this children book made for Asian American. Let me just fucking educate myself and my inner child. And it's such a beautiful story, like with a female safe society. And she just chugs goes, deals with loneliness, but has become an honorable thing that people Revere. Yeah, I'm so happy you question that, because why do we eat moon cakes? Why? My parents never really like, they don't taste incredible. They're 1000 calories per quarter. Why? But now I have to eat one. For Chang’e, for her.

Narration: I wanted us to take a moment to listen to that story, because as we heard earlier before the break, there are so beautiful ways our cultures are already connected to nature. Our cultural stories and traditions contain knowledge passed down through generations. They are how our ancestors came to understand the natural world around them, by telling and sharing stories. As I myself have been cultivating my connection to nature, I’ve realized it’s really about REconnecting to our roots and to our ancestors. 

Group conversation:
the first thing I thought was like, you know what? I want to go to the Himalayas

I need to be with my people, I mean my Papa's gone many times in my country, but more as a child than not really being able to go and connect and embrace all these other places that some of my other family members kind of talk about. And it's like, no, I need to be there not just in nature, but then on that ground, on that homeland, on that, you know, deeper, spiritual, cultural, intrinsic level. That's what I need to do at some point. Maybe when this pandemic, whenever this pandemic gets over and when I have the next opportunity to go,

because we go back to our motherland kids. And it's a family obligation. It's not fun. But with the new awakening, you actually want to go and be like, let me experience this

On my terms, on my own, even for me to able to take it in and understand

and not just feel that cultural conflict. Of being dragged around, meeting people that you may not be connected from visiting everybody and then realizing, like, I just spent my summer as a child being forced to do something. And I don't understand this.

Narration: As we’ve explored in our podcast, connecting to the earth is just the start. Loving it and caring for it, establishes a two-way relationship and builds stewardship for the place we call home.

Group conversation: My parents really valued going outdoors, and they were both educated in the University system in California, the public school system. And so they settled very comfortably and nicely in Silicon Valley. And i grew up as a Silicon Valley baby with access to just about everything I wanted to have access to. Except I honestly didn't really care to have the access because I had a pretty narrow world view at the time

But Luckily, I did have some opportunities to go camping at different national and state parks in the area and outside of it. And I didn't see other Asian folks, other Black folks, other Latinx folks, outside, other Indigenous folks. The bulk of my memories when I met other campers, they're all white, many elderly, not many young, many elderly folks. And that was my all American camping experience. It was with other white folks, and I never really questioned my identity in it. I was just this young child just running around.

And then I started growing older and still going out in nature. That's when you bothered me really deeply that I wasn't seeing other people of color in my area, which was mostly Asian, East Asian, which is again, there's some level of privileges, privilege there with the demographic. But still there were other Asian folks. There were other black folks, and is the reason why so many people who are fighting climate change right now are interested in climate change or want to do something about it and are very visible and vocal about it is because they had the exposure to be out in nature, to care about nature as a way for them to experience perhaps what we work we're experiencing now but way earlier and for longer and many more times.

I think that seeing us out here and being able to open dialogue about greater systemic changes and forces and phenomenons, namely global warming and climate change. I hope this is conduit for more people of color and especially Asians, to fight for sustainability and greener future for our future generations, because it isn't just about us. It's also about what we're returning back to the land and who we want to return it to and who we're going to do it with and hopefully it's with other Asians, other BIPOC folks, especially Indigenous folks.

I'm still very concerned about climate change and hope to see that Asians and Asian women and femms and non binary folks are really leading and also elevating other movements to fight back against greed and capitalism. And I know it's sort of labor of love and spiritual work and exhausting, but yeah, it's just, I guess sort of we will see.

I do believe people have agency, but I'm like what forces created, the choices that people had. What is it that made it so dire that you decided you had to leave your home, like the place where you were, the majority of the place where the land that birthed you, the people that held you, the community that loved you, like the culture, the language that is of your blood and bone, leaving that to go somewhere else with such risk like that's, not a decision any individual takes slightly and survivor.

as we're here, we've been in some way, like all of us displaced from motherland, our motherland, and then now trying to figure out where we fit on this land and because we don't have relationship to land, at least personally feel this, like cognitive dissonance, because I care about climate change on an intellectual

But because I have not had a relationship to land that I'm trying to cultivate now as an adult as a result of what my family went through and also not having been back to Vietnam as an adult without my family, I feel at times like really paralyzed with what can I do? Because I don't even know when I'm protecting. But what I should be protecting and so much of this idea that we're radical and taking up space is also like, it becomes so much easier to protect something when I have a relationship with it.

And when I know what it means to me and not just like what some white climate activists posted on Instagram to try to shame me into action, I'm like, no, this is this is a felt, sensory somatic experience. And in that emotional connection, I think is going to stay with me and make me more passionate about and also think more empowered. Come back to it. Sara said. If I just look at the news, I just feel like, well, shit was bad and it's all going bad, and we should have done something yesterday.

So I'm just going to curl up under the companies. I'm so depressed reading this, but being out here with you all I'm like, no, fuck that. We're fighting. We're fighting the Earth can regenerate. The Earth is powerful, but she just she needs us right now.

Can I just say, with a big group of people from different cultural backgrounds and ancestral path, like, we are literally, I've never been around other people who can elegantly and eloquently express their feelings and maybe not their mother tongue, and we can just validate and understand each other so beautifully. Like, you all are speaking Mandarin Chinese to me. It's so fucking beautiful and there's no fillers. There's no filtering, I would assume, and it's just so fluid in the way you guys express yourself with different cultural backgrounds from

Like, I was fucking beautiful. That's beautiful, because English isn't my first language. I don't know about you guys that I know for a fact I don't speak Vietnamese or Thai any other languages that you guys may have grown up with. And it's so cool that I can understand you to like the soul and not our mother tongue, and that, I think might be the first one. I've kind of embraced the Asian American experience where I realize, oh, shit. Other people grew up displaced from their homes, too.

I wonder what we're like now. And this is what it's like now. A bunch of late twenties, early thirties people having shared experiences that we just kind of grew quietly and feeling othered. No idea blew my mind . When I was a kid. I was like, I'm the only one

Narration: As the camping trip came to a close, each of the campers shared their final words and reflections.

Group conversation:

I want to encourage other Asians people around me to look into what the Cosmos is doing, join the Cosmos or form something similar if they don't identify as femme or non binary or a woman and ask them how they feel about nature and how nature makes them feel. And why aren't they connected to nature and what they think could happen when they're out in nature and just try to advanced conversations or spark them about that.

I'm going home with like six mosquito bites. Three on your face. But definitely, I’m just going to bring home inner peace, and hold on to that for the rest of my life. I’m probably never going to forget it. I’m going to make new traditions that are meaningful to you, like you said. And I'm going to make sure, like, maybe my future generations will know nature as a very Asian thing to do. And they're not just gonna go on fishing because I don't honestly like fishing. So we're gonna go sit on the beach and eat some moon cakes and honor our ancestors in our own ways. 

It made me feel, like, less alone. I didn't even realize there are ways in which I was feeling lonely because I think so much of the pandemic, like, we just have to adapt and normalize. But there is a part of me that has been activated and touched that hasn't been in a while. I feel I don't know if you remember that scene in Mulan where she's praying at the shrine and all her ancestors come up before she runs away from home. I visualize that all the time.

After she tried singing Reflections by Christina Aguilera in the water, I feel like us being here together. Like, what I sense is like behind us, our ancestors rising up out of the ground, are coming from the sky and like, lovingly, pushing us forward. And like, you got this, like we thought we suffered. We endured so that you could shine, you could thrive. You could feel love and that you could make sure other people will feel how you feel. Like that's what I feel empowered by. I think a lot of this I have to think, because I've been reading more Indigenous science and wisdom and the way that Indigenous folks have connection to spirituality.

I'm remembering my ancestors had that too. Like, Asian cultures are hella spiritual at their base. I think about my fact that my grandma literally has a farm and, like, chicken, like, so many animals, I would go to the bathroom and a hole in the ground in crops. And that's in me that's, like, some version is in all of us. And I'm like, the answers are all inside. I just got to tap back in and listen and not let the world and white supremacy distract me from what I already have.

And so I feel like what I have is worth something even more. Now that I see that each of you are trying to hold whatever that is for yourself.

They would be so proud right now.

They’re probably like, cheering and drinking. That good good.

I wanted or got what exactly what I wanted. But I think it was like a connection and feeling of release again in a very different way of just being seeing and surrendering and quiet time, but also quiet time with others. And I guess the thing that I want everyone else to go home with is a feeling of things will be okay. Like, I know we have a lot of our own things going on and decisions to be made, but there’s power in not knowing. So idk. And that's okay. And keep going. We got this. We got this. IDK and that’s ok.

I think for me, I'm, like, really coming back home to myself, homing kind of taking in not just what people are saying and listening, but also, I was going to say learning, but I'm really unlearning and being able to be centered and to connect with myself. I'm unlearning all the crap from, like before, from my own histories, from, like, what we just gone through society and be able to connect and ground literally spiritually metaphorically to nature. And I just hope anyone who comes across us and listen, it's just a fine listen to yourself and find your people places and spaces where you know, you resonate and where you connect and where you belong help you with your journey but also the collective journey of where you need to take your claws out and bring this world back to us. Yes.

OUTRO:

Narration: Thank you SO much to Cassandra and Karen for creating these beautiful spaces at The Cosmos for Asian women in the outdoors and working with me to help share those stories. Heaps of gratitude to the Camp Cosmos’ participants for letting us all in and allowing us to feel some of the magic they created together, at camp.

Our beautiful logo and cover art was designed by Brooklyn Bell and this lovely music you hear at the beginning and end of every episode was performed by Olivia VanDamme and produced by Jamison Blue Stegmaier

All credits, links and resources can be found on our website: outsidevoicespodcast.com

You can also follow us on Instagram, @OutsideVoicesPodcast

Outside Voices Podcast is a project by Resource Media. This episode was made in partnership with our friends at Merrell and sponsored in part by Endel.

Until next time. 

POST-ROLL:

AD: Special thanks again to Merrell, for partnering with us on this episode and for supporting Camp Cosmos. Merrell believes in sharing the simple power of being outside. No matter who you are, where you come from, who you love or how you move — Everyone should be welcome in the outdoors and wherever life takes us.