This is Berknow.

As a kid in Columbus, Ohio, Dudley Edminson came to love being outside.

I did not have any outdoor role models who looked like me, but it was really just once I fell in love with the natural world.

That was it.

Accessing those spaces was so important to my mental and physical health.

I refused to let anything or anyone get in my way.

And as he progressed in his career as a nature photographer in Minnesota, Dudley wanted to show the next generation of black nature enthusiasts that there are people who look like them knee outdoors.

So he wrote a book called Black and Brown Faces in America's Wild Places.

I wanted to try to introduce other people to nature, particularly people of color and black folks in general because I know that we have higher levels of stress than most people in America.

As people of color, but African Americans in particular, and so I felt like there was some therapeutic components to connecting to nature that could help us with those daily stresses.

And so that became something that I wanted to do.

And so the book was kind of that for years of traveling the country to find other black people who loved nature.

Hear more about Dudley's self taught journey into birding and photography.

Plus how he's supporting the next generation on the Bring Birds Back podcast.

Listen to your favorite podcast at or at birdnote.org.

I'm Tanai J. Hamilton.