THE GIRL
Hi, I’m Kisha!
When it comes to my career, I’m the Culture & People Director at Ars Nova. And as a recovering actor, I feel at home on a stage in front of thousands of people. BUT, when it came to spending time outdoors, I never thought that was a place that I belonged.
I didn’t camp. I didn’t spend hours in the woods. And yet, when I lived in Portland, I found a love I didn’t know existed. I found the love of my life - hiking. Days spent exploring all of the swimming holes and waterfalls in the Pacific Northwest transitioned into my first solo trip to Reykjavík, Iceland. I scuba-dived, hiked through Gullfoss, Skógafoss, Hengifoss, and fiingvellir, and I HIKED UP AND THROUGH A GLACIER! Me! All 240 pounds of me. I became a superhuman on that trip. I’m a fat, Black woman with Lupus who hikes glaciers, mutherf*ckers! My outdoor exploration unlocked something in me. After that, I was unstoppable!
The representation of someone who looked like me, experiencing the same things as me - as a person of color on the trail, as a person with an autoimmune disease on the trail, as a fat person on the trail - was and is scarce. I want to change that.