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Diana Nyad was parched.
Could you blame her? She of marathon swimming and now red carpet fame had just delivered a rousing speech to a packed house at the Denver Art Museum this past Sunday, June 1, during the two-day Outside Festival. After the speech, Nyad stood under the midday Colorado sun in front of a long queue of autograph seekers, all clutching copies of her 2016 memoir Find a Way. Nyad spoke to each person, delivering wisdom about overcoming goggle tans or facing down fear, hugged them, and then signed the publication. But even marathon swimmers sometimes get thirsty.
And only one refreshment would do. “I need a snow cone!” Nyad barked.
The handful of us manning the autograph tent—editors, film producers, and advertising reps—looked at each other in confusion. Luckily for Nyad, snow cones were not far away. Chris Keyes, the general manager for Outside, and SKI editor-in-chief Sierra Shafer were making the icy treats at nearby booth. Moments later, a piña colada-flavored ball of shaved ice arrived for our guest of honor, who bit into it mid-soliloquy without missing a beat.
This scene played out on Sunday, the second day of the festival. I was there, and so were dozens of my Outside coworkers—we abandoned our day jobs of editing feature stories and selling advertisements to cosplay as event promoters. Look, I’m absolutely biased here, but the shindig we helped throw ruled. The inaugural Outside Festival had killer tunes, engaging outdoor films, celebrity book signings, dog stunts, bike stunts, food, and too many other events to list. Based on my extremely rough estimate, a billion zillion people showed up to dance and attend panel discussions and pet doggies, and everyone one of them was stoked. (No, this is not the official attendance count.)
My gig—half crowd management, half info kiosk—was a job that any journalist would have been proud to do. In between my duties—wrangling Nyad and author Kevin Fedarko, and pointing lots of sweaty people to the closest hydration station—I perused the festival grounds to check out the sights and sounds and mingle with guests.
I met a ton of friendly attendees, all of whom love the outdoors. They told me all sorts of anecdotes about their time at the festival. Here’s what I saw and heard:
Groovin’ and Movin’
Crowds funneled into the festival grounds Saturday evening just as the sun began to set. Lights illuminated Denver’s City and County building behind the main stage as some warmup music prompted everyone to get on their feet for the next act, Thundercat
In the crowd, Micah Gurard-Levin, 39, also rose. Gurard-Levin is a former pianist who now works the director of community impact for broadband communications company Liberty Global. He didn’t know Thundercat’s music but his friends did, and after a few opening bars of the first song, he got into the groove.
“It was this real avant-garde fusion of jazz and funk—a style I hadn’t heard in a while,” Gurard-Levin told me. “It was like music from an old-school eighties video game. Like, you’re about to fight the final boss and the music gets faster.”
Everyone was dancing as the skies darkened. Gurard-Levin looked at the crowd and noticed that the makeup had changed. Earlier in the day, he said, the attendees looked like hardcore outdoor enthusiasts. As the festival progressed, he said, the makeup evolved—younger and more diverse crowd added to the climbers, runners, and cyclists.
“That was the big macro picture for me—there was this intersection between different communities in the park,” he said. “And everyone was having fun.”
A Meeting to Remember
Talia Hoke, 45, sat in the crowd at the Sturm Pavilion and listened to three speakers share their stories during the “Journeys of Purpose” panel on Saturday afternoon. One of them, wildlife biologist Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, caught Hoke’s attention. Dr. Wynn-Grant said the outdoor world felt alien to her growing up, because it appeared to be the playground for white men. Early in her career, she felt like an outsider in wildlife biology because of her background and the color of her skin. Hoke, a marriage and family therapist, had traveled to Denver from Philadelphia for the event. She sat in the crowd and nodded along.
“Just because you come from Black America doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have access to these places,” Hoke said. “It was empowering to hear that she had the tenacity to make it the center of her life.”
After the panel ended, Hoke beelined for the autograph tent. She purchased three copies of Dr. Wynn-Grant’s memoir, Wild Life, and then stood in line to meet her. When Dr. Wynn-Grant finally arrived, Hoke made the most of the experience: photos, conversation, hugs, and even tears. One book is for her mother, Hoke said, and the other is for her soon-to-be mother-in law.
Meeting Dr. Wynn-Grant was a highlight of the weekend, but so was walking around Civic Center Park and checking out the city. Hoke said that downtown Philadelphia lacks the access to outdoors that we take for granted in Colorado. And on her flight back home, she started checking out home prices in Denver. “You never know what the future holds,” she told me.
“I’m not a mountaineer or a backpacker,” she continued. “I walked away realizing the positive potential for how the outdoors can impact the people in my life.”
Winning a Golden Ticket
Jonah Grove is a huge fan of Diana Nyad.
When her employer, Price Waterhouse Cooper, told its employees that it had a limited number of tickets to the Outside Festival to give away, and that hopeful attendees should write an essay about why they wanted to go, Grove focused hers on Nyad. “She’s a great entertainer,” Grove told me. “Every time I hear her talk I’m reminded that she did her swim at age 64. That’s inspiring.”
Grove won the tickets, and placed Nyad’s talk atop her to-do list. But what else was there to do? Grove checked out the schedule and picked out a handful of other events to hit: a screening of the film Wade into Water, listening to author (and former Outside staffer) Katie Arnold discuss her new book, Running Home. Grove could check out the food trucks, climbing competitions, and of course the music.
I met Grove on Saturday when she buzzed by my booth and filled out an online form to win a pair of Columbia running shoes. A few hours later we did a random drawing and she was a big winner. “I’ve never won anything!” she said when she claimed her footwear. Then, on Sunday, she returned to the booth to meet Nyad and get a photo snapped with her hero. Guess who took the pic? Yours truly—yet another skill I got to apply to my festival job.
I asked Grove what she spoke to Nyad about. “I got up there and didn’t know what to say—I think I asked her about how her day was going,” Grove told me. “I was too excited.”
