This October, I will be speaking at the Maryland Outdoor Recreation Summit, and I am grateful to be home, showing Baltimore how outdoor experiences can reshape our health, confidence and community.

I grew up in Baltimore City. For me, nature was a patch of grass by a rowhouse, the blacktop around a rec center or the swings at a neighborhood park. Hiking trails and riverbanks were not part of my everyday life, and the outdoors felt distant and almost off-limits. I shared that feeling in a Sports Illustrated profile when I described being raised in a city environment with playgrounds in the ’80s and ’90s, and how the outdoors was not part of my world. That feeling was real, and it is one I carry with me as motivation.

My first nature-led group trip was both exhilarating and frightening. On

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