Terra Incognita Media Erin Monahan

Prince Shakur is a writer, activist, and filmmaker who grew up in Jamaica and moved to the U.S. when he was young. Shakur has traveled extensively and holds an impressive resume of published written works and he's only 23. His essay, "A Black Traveler Confronts Racism at a Montana Resort," published recently in Outside magazine, provides an insightful and raw account of Shakur's time working and living in Big Sky, Montana, a remote ski town in the Rockies. In this interview Shakur opens up about the nuances of taking up space, how everything is political, and the important labor of being honest.

Ani moved to Colorado from Atlanta, Georgia when he was 13. On the drive he was stunned by the landscape. “It was overwhelming for me moving from Atlanta straight to Colorado. One thing that really hit me, you know, we flew straight from Atlanta to Denver, then drove from Denver to Colorado Springs, and the drive from Denver to Colorado Springs. The whole time I was pretty much just overwhelmed and in awe just about the landscape because everything was so different from Atlanta. We took every opportunity we could. We kind of wanted to be Nat Geo explorers type of thing, that was our romantic idea of who we were.”

Ani’s goal is to create an inner passion with kids to connect with the outdoors on an emotional and personal level. “Unless you live in a town like Boulder where you can get out to the mountains for free, but Boulder is expensive to live in. It’s a hard thing to tackle. This is something that you can’t tackle all at once. You have to do it one step at a time.”