Baratunde Thurston on His Joyful and Intense ‘America Outdoors’ Experiences

America Outdoors With Baratunde Thurston Courtesy of Twin Cities PBS

In the six-part travel and adventure series, America Outdoors With Baratunde Thurston, bestselling author and outdoor enthusiast Baratunde Thurston explores a diverse array of wild spaces across the United States and discovers a vivid cast of characters of different backgrounds and abilities whose outdoor lives are shaped by the landscapes of where they live.

The initial episodes premiering this month beginning July 5 at 9pm ET/PT on PBS find Thurston in Death Valley, Idaho, Los Angeles and Appalachia.

“I think about [the title of] this show mentally as like America, comma, Outdoors,” Thurston says. “It was a really joyful, intense and sometimes exhausting way for me to connect with my own country and its various peoples and so many different attitudes and politics — but on the terms of nature, not the terms of a political debate or even a spiritual experience.”

According to executive producer Michael Rosenfeld, this series is “intended to really capture the way we as Americans experience the outdoors, which is a little bit like looking through a kaleidoscope because we experience it in so many different ways. … We [did find] a lot of differences across the country, [but] we also found some themes that really sort of tie us together as a nation: love of the outdoors and a real desire to make the outdoors accessible.”

“We’ve all a right to, and a relationship with, this land,” Thurston adds. “This land is your land, this land is my land. We found so many beautiful examples [of this].

“Whether we go to the most extreme, remote and hot area, or we’re just in our backyard doing urban gardening stuff, there is this opportunity to reground, re-center and connect with ourselves through our connection to the environment.”