Footprints for Change: Florida native is first known Black woman to thru-hike Florida Trail
When George Floyd’s life was taken at the hands of police, sparking national outrage and grief, Crystal Gail Welcome turned to nature as her form of Black resistance.
The 42-year-old Jacksonville native was finishing graduate school at Prescott College in Arizona when the ripple effect of Floyd’s death was felt far and wide.
“I decided I was going to thru-hike the Superior Hiking Trail in Minnesota in honor of George Floyd, but also to show a different form of protest that was nature-based,” Welcome said. “I did those 310 miles, and when I finished, I went to his memorial site and left my trekking poles there. I said to myself, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen yet, but I know there’s going to be change and I know it starts here.’”
That’s when Welcome decided to keep using her “Footprints for Change” to inspire other historically excluded people to spend time outdoors. After completing a large section of the Pacific Crest Trail and the Arizona Trail, Welcome turned her attention to her home state as the Florida Trail celebrates a milestone.
“It’s the Florida Trail’s 40th anniversary. No Black woman on record has [thru-hiked] it,” she said of the trail, which spans about 1,100 miles for an end-to-end hike. “I happen to represent many groups. I’m a woman, and I’m Black, so I talk to my community about what we need to do. I’m also LGBTQ+, and I have a rare brain disease. I’m trying to let people know that we’re limitless.”
Welcome uses a brain implant to manage pain caused by intracranial hypertension, which means she needs to get off trail periodically to recharge the implant’s batteries.
“Crystal will be the first neurological implant recipient to thru-hike the Florida Trail and the first known Black female to complete the trail end to end,” said Jane Pollack, communications and outreach manager for the Florida Trail Association.
After growing up near the beach, Welcome said she was pleasantly surprised to explore the biodiversity found along the Florida Trail.
“I’m seeing more flora and fauna than I ever knew existed here,” she said. “You can go like three miles and then the terrain or what you’re looking at is different. I love that.”
Other highlights from Welcome’s thru-hike, which has spanned more than a month so far, have included visits to the trail’s designated Gateway Communities, which offer stamps on a passport during trips into town.
“You get to meet cool people and collect stamps. My favorite has been the Oviedo Chamber of Commerce,” she said. “Every town that I’ve been through has been amazing.”
In venturing outdoors and backpacking, Welcome has worked to overcome the lack of representation in outdoor spaces. Though demographic data on thru-hikers is harder to pinpoint, research from JSTOR shows that “although [people of color] make up more than 37 percent of the general population, they represent only 22 percent of [national] park visitors.”
Specific initiatives have sought to reverse the historical trend and promote inclusion in outdoor spaces, such as Every Kid Outdoors and Outdoor Afro, and Welcome hopes to be a trailblazer for other people who look like her.
“When I started in backpacking, it was kind of hard because I never saw a single person that looked like me, ever,” she said. “When you see yourself reflected, then you believe that something belongs to you, too. It’s like, ‘Look, there’s someone who looks like me that’s doing this, too.’”
To learn more about Footprints for Change, visit footprintsforchange.com or @footprintsforchange on Instagram.
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