Drag Me Outside hikes reconnect queer Portlanders with flora, fauna, and friends

Efemmera Gendera and Thespis D. Light are surprised by the enthusiastic response to their drag naturewalk series, Drag Me Outside. Walks have rolled out biweekly since March, revealed through Drag Me Outside’s mailing list, to connect Portlanders to nature through an unapologetically queer learning style. The tours are often described as hikes, but are designed to be low impact and on solid enough terrain to make Drag Me Outside as accessible for as many needs as possible. 

“We want this to be a place for queer people to get out in nature, and we want this to be a place where allies feel safe coming out, joining their queer friends and seeing that queerness isn’t this gated community, you’re allowed to come in and say hi to everybody,” says Evergreen Hosp, the mind behind Thespis D. Light. 

Drag Me Outside started as a joke between Gendera (Fiona Skye) and Light on social media. They learned they are transgender natural science experts: Skye received her master’s in ornithology from the University of Kentucky last year with a focus on bushtits (Skye welcomes all jokes). Hosp has worked as a park ranger around Oregon for five years in parks managed by different regional governments, giving him an inside look at how Oregon maintains its natural beauty. 

Both artists are relatively new in Portland’s drag world. Skye got into drag amid academic burnout, immersing herself into Lexington’s queer nightlife scene (she says she realized she was trans while attending a King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard concert with friends). Hosp similarly discovered drag amid academic burnout. He attended a drag king show at CC Slaughters while taking a term off from school and was impressed by the performances. They were both inspired by the Bend-based drag queen Pattie Gonia, whose blend of drag and environmental activism has earned her a global online following. Gonia raised more than $1 million from over 35,000 donors in December after hiking 100 miles in six days in drag (sans heels), from Point Reyes National Seashore to the Golden Gate Bridge.

“People are very intimidated by hiking,” Hosp says. “So many people have this idea that a hike is this big summiting the mountain-type thing. When you have hiking described in such a way, people with different mobility skills feel like they aren’t welcome in those spaces. We like to tell people, ‘This is a hike, but not a hike.’”

Hosp is originally from New England and grew up in Connecticut. He moved to Portland in 2021 from Orlando, after visiting weeks before the pandemic’s lockdown. He admires the state’s commitment to environmentalism. Skye is originally from Santa Clarita, California, and attended Portland State University for her undergrad. She attended University of Kentucky on a free scholarship, but finished the program back in Portland following President Trump’s reelection in 2024. Hosp similarly chose Portland on a friend’s advice after he and his fiance experienced regular anti-LGBTQIA2S+ harassment. Portland’s weather and hallmark weirdness attracted them both.

“We were like, ‘This is actively not a safe space, we’re both queer and in a queer relationship, we’ve had so many negative issues in this area, we’ve got to get out,’” Hosp said.  

Drag Me Outside achieves several goals at once. Not only does it connect people to the broad natural world, but it connects queer people breaking away from the bar scene or social media. It connects Portlanders to the parks and natural areas their taxes pay for, which help not only taxpayers but also the natural areas threatened by budget cuts. A recent Drag Me Outside hike officially partnered with the City of Wilsonville saw attendees ranging from ages 23 to 75.

“It’s a very special community that we’re able to build,” Skye said. “Queer people have historically found safety in bars, but we can also build community outside of bars. It works here in Portland because people are pretty accepting.”

Groups like Drag Me Outdoors, People of Color Outdoors and AmigxPNW don’t just make nature accessible for queer outdoor enthusiasts and hikers of color. Hosp says that other nature events he’s attended are dominated by older straight white people who don’t welcome inexperienced newcomers.  

“Typically the people you find birding — and Portland is unique, so you can find cooler, younger queer people doing it — but a lot of the people you find are going to be small groups of people who don’t really want to communicate with you, or older people who are seasoned in what they’re doing and they don’t want to talk to you or they think they know more than you,” Skye added. 

“It can be hard to enjoy these spaces as a queer person because you never know who’s out there,” Hosp said. “We are in Oregon absolutely, but what people seem to forget is that Oregon is not Portland, and it’s very easy to think of Oregon as Portland and think, ‘Why wouldn’t you want to go outside?’ If you go to a lot of places within 10 miles of Portland, even now, you’re going to find MAGA, or ‘Get Off My Land,’ or these really scary groups of people. One park I worked at eight miles outside of Portland had a big issue with (Ku Klux) Klan members holding events there.”

Gendera and Light put their own spin on enthusiastic nature presenters like David Attenborough, Robert Irwin and Pamela Anderson. Their interests and professional backgrounds — as well as their daytime drag makeup and sunscreen — are inherently different from their non-queer peers. Skye says that how people first learn science affects their relationship to it later in life. Genetic science, for example, rarely considers queerness in its studies.  

“The way that we teach (science) definitely turns people into nihilists because we’re not teaching it properly,” she said. “If you learn science and the awe of the natural world and your curiosity is beaten out of you, you did not learn it correctly…I think we really need the arts and humanities if we’re going to be teaching STEM. STEM should have been STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) 30+ years ago, and it should be STEAM now, but it isn’t.”

Drag Me Outside’s curriculum is tailored to each trail it visits. They’ve visited Smith and Bybee Wetlands Natural Area, Tryon Creek Natural State Area and Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge, among others, never covering more than two miles on each hike. Recurring topics include noise pollution and invasive species along with observing the individual bird, plant and animal species they encounter. Since starting in the Portland area’s cold/rainy time, Skye and Hosp want to host specially themed seasonal hikes for different plants’ peak months or different species’ migratory patterns. Every ecosystem is different, but Portland’s terrain and industrial history has artificially divided them. 

“I make the joke that all Portland used to be a dairy farm, because every natural area that we go to, we look into the history of it and it’s always like ‘Famously a dairy farm from this year to this year,’ and we’re like, why?” Hosp said. 

“All of the white settlers brought their cows, they saw the wetlands, they said ‘This land is not productive, let’s fill it in and make it a dairy farm and an orchard and sell fruit!’” Skye added. 

“If they couldn’t make it a dairy farm or an orchard, they made it a dump,” Hosp said. 

Repeat visits are rare, but when they happen, it’s usually due to the trail’s accessibility features like low inclines, paved surfaces for mobility devices, public transit access, and amenities including public restrooms and water stations. Trails need to be safely level enough for Skye to lead groups in high heels. Drag Me Outside has taught Skye and Hosp that not all natural spaces in the Portland area were created equal, and that some lack these features. Budget cuts, meanwhile, threaten their maintenance and the public’s access to them.  

“We want everybody and anybody to look at this hike and be like, ‘Oh, I can definitely go out and do this.’ We don’t want anybody to feel like they aren’t welcome or aren’t able to do it,” Hosp said. “These spaces belong to us.”

This article appears in June 24, 2026.