What It's Really Like to Attend Camp Yoshi: Community, Food & Conversation

Our group bonded quickly—as we mingled on a walk and a bike ride through town, we took note of the fact that everyone in Bend seemed to be looking at us. And why wouldn’t they be? Nearly 90% of the city's population is white. When was the last time thirteen urbane, stylish people of color marched their way through the city center? At one point, we gathered at a coffee shop, unwittingly crowding around a table someone had left a bag beneath. When they returned from the bathroom, they were clearly a bit confused by our group. As they delicately reached for their bag, they said something like, “Sorry for interrupting the people of color convention!” They quickly walked it back—"More of this please, it's so pale here"—but the clumsy initial comment echoed in my mind for the rest of the week. The damage was done.

I have experienced plenty of racist interactions on press trips. Memorably, while I was biking in Vermont, someone rolled down the windows of their van to whoop at me with their hand and mouth. Never mind I am South Asian and not Indigenous—or, as my high school U.S. history teacher so gracefully put it, “Dot, not feather Indian.” Accuracy is always lost on racists. In the moment, I flipped the driver off and went on with my ride (you can take the cyclist out of New York…). When I recounted the story to my compatriots on the trip, they were appropriately horrified and sympathetic. But at that moment I didn’t want prolonged sympathy, I wanted to briefly make fun of the fool and move on with the day.

This was much easier to do on a trip without white people. It was genuinely refreshing to be around our group when a local introduced the dog I was petting as Buddha. I immediately made eye contact with another camper—we didn’t need to go deep on the insanity of telling a South Asian person you had named your dog after a South Asian religious founder. We kept our cool until a safe distance, then just started laughing.

As we toured Bend on bikes, Jesse took a moment to quickly give us one of the Camp Yoshi mottos. “Morale is high!” he exclaimed. He didn’t dive too deep into what that meant, but I also never felt like it needed explaining. Throughout the entire trip, whether we were kayaking in Elk Lake, participating in a group yoga class, floating the Deschutes River, or just chilling at camp, I kept feeling myself smile with my entire face. I felt so at ease in our group from the get-go, never unhappy or unsettled. Morale was high indeed.

Camp Yoshi Serves Distinctive Food in Amazing Places

It took some time to make our way from downtown Bend to our campsite, tucked away in the shadow of Central Oregon’s Broken Top mountain. After a bouncy ride up forest roads, we arrived at a clearing where the Camp Yoshi team had already set up a Snow Peak tent for each of us, plus two pop-up bathrooms and a communal seating area around a Takibi grill. After I chose my tent for the week—I went with the one closest to the edge of our area, so that I could pee at night without waking anyone—it was time to experience the foundational offering of every Camp Yoshi trip: food.

Rashad is a bona fide chef. Before starting Camp Yoshi, he operated a catering company in New York. When corporate cooking gigs evaporated during the pandemic, he started cooking for his childhood friends and family members, often outdoors. He and his co-founders quickly made the connection between cooking at camp and the kinds of fish fries and reunions he attended growing up in North Carolina. So, when the team started planning epic outdoor excursions, they knew good cooking had to be at their center.

During previous camping experiences, I've found that food is often an afterthought. I’ve eaten plenty of instant noodles and peanut butter sandwiches in the woods. Once, after a genuinely arduous car-less journey to get to a campsite in Maryland from my college campus in Washington D.C., my then-girlfriend and I ordered a Domino’s pizza.

At Camp Yoshi, the food is genuinely exciting. On our first night, I ate glazed salmon, a perfect fire-roasted potato, and a fresh tomato and avocado salad. The next morning, a crunchy fried egg with seafood patties. Then pulled pork sandwiches and slaw for lunch and Cascatelli bolognese for dinner, plus a surprise bonus dish of grilled fish and succotash.

But my favorite meal was something simpler. On the final morning we spent at camp, Rashad fired thick, chewy flour tortillas, wonderfully seasoned beef, more fried eggs, and a full spread of additional toppings. The breakfast tacos I constructed for myself that morning were simply the best I’ve ever had—especially with a drizzle of Cholula from the gargantuan bottle passed around the group.

Also on the Camp Yoshi Menu: Challenging, Transformational Conversation

Ultimately, great food wasn't just necessary fuel for the excursions we had on the docket. (Though I was grateful to have been fed before kayaking, and that there was food waiting for me the moment we got off the boats.) Meals provided the setting for what turned out to be my favorite part of the Camp Yoshi experience: thought-provoking conversation with curious strangers.

This began in the car from the airport, when fellow attendee Shanika Hillocks and I started peppering Jesse with questions about traveling to Japan with his partner. Soon, we were talking about what it was like to raise teenagers in this information economy and what it took to feel settled in Oregon as a person of color who grew up around Boston. During our first meal at camp, the conversation turned to the lack of diversity we had all noticed downtown. Why was Bend so white? I learned about the Oregon Land Donation Act of 1850, which promised 320 acres of land to any white male who came to the territory just after it had been established, but also about laws that existed into the 20th century that literally made it illegal to live in the state if you were Black or mixed. I learned that in the 1920s, Oregon counted the highest per capita membership in the KKK.

This was far from typical press trip talk. Sure, I’ve been on trips where people are willing to speak abstractly about the structural barriers that exist within the outdoor, cycling, and fashion industries. But there’s usually a sanitized, affable tenor to those discussions, where I’ve felt it’d be inappropriate or almost rude to talk about anything other than progress that has been made and possible future efforts. Conversation often feels surface-level—everyone says to keep in touch and reach out, but you board the train home unsure whether you gained anything deeper than a couple more Instagram followers.

This is not to say I haven’t forged genuine, lasting relationships on these trips. But the Camp Yoshi experience facilitated these relationships in ways other similarly epic adventures have not. At Camp Yoshi, I had conversation after conversation that expanded my knowledge of how we have reached this point in history and what we people of marginalized communities actually owe to each other as we try to move society forward.

One conversation that's stayed with me was about a bar that no longer exists near my apartment in Brooklyn. The bar quickly became a community hub for many of the young Black creatives that both grew up in and had moved to the neighborhood, eventually attracting the attention of celebrities who would casually drop in for early evening drinks and late night DJ sets. The business faced plenty of external obstacles—neighbors would complain about noisy patrons lingering in front of the building, even after folks were shuffled inside; rent was high and kept getting higher—and it ended up closing to pivot into a members-only club. Okay, fine, except: Years after the bar served its last drink, no members' club has appeared.

We talked about what went wrong, about how the founders got over their skis with a massive influx of investment that led them to overspend on the launch of a spirits brand and a redesign of the space. But the conversation quickly shifted from a play-by-play recap to a broader discussion of what industrious people of color owe to each other as we attempt to build spaces for comfort, connection, and community. Whether we’re trying to create friendly environments for people to develop skills around hobbies with high barriers to entry or businesses that cater to each other's needs, we have a responsibility to make sure that we are equipped to deliver on the promises that we make.

Is a Camp Yoshi Trip Worth It?

I had arrived at Camp Yoshi with my guard up. In retrospect, I think I was trying to brace myself for expected disappointment. Surely no trip could meet the lofty expectations created by a multi-thousand-dollar price tag? I was not prepared for the unique luxury that the Camp Yoshi team actually provided. The trip was approachable enough for a person who had never slept in a tent before, but also offered enough access to nature for someone who spends nearly twenty hours a week hiking and trail running. Each excursion, each meal, each conversation chipped away at the shell I had brought with me.

Ultimately, though, what fully cracked it was the time I spent alone in nature. One night, after everyone else had fallen asleep, I unzipped myself from my sleeping bag and went on a walk around our camp. I stared up at the sky and let myself zone out against the backdrop of bright constellations. I felt so much more in my body and brain than I had in months.

It was that calm, collected version of me that decided it’d be fun to spend my last morning in Bend on a trail run by myself. It was that version of me that felt hyper-engaged and locked in to a conversation about how we can create communities that can last. It was that version of me that saw Rashad doing something a little dangerous, but extremely fun, and decided that, instead of just sitting in the second row, I could join in.

Holding onto the sides of the car as we gently rolled down toward camp I felt so unbelievably grateful for the time I had spent with this crew in this forest. And honestly, I’d be more than happy to pay to do it again.