Rachel S. Gross is a historian of the outdoor industry and author of “Shopping All the Way to the Woods: How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America” (Yale University Press, 2024). She is an assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado Denver where she teaches U.S. environmental, business, and public history.
SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory. What inspired you to write it? Where did the story/theme originate?
Gross: I went on a yearlong backpacking trip around the world at 22. It turns out the packing list I had so carefully assembled and the clothes and equipment I thought would keep me warm and dry were so very American. Not just the brands I sported — REI, Patagonia, Smartwool — but the ideas behind the gear: how to layer, how to deal with the rain, how to eat on the trail, the idea that “cotton kills.”
Reading adventure fiction and scouting handbooks in my childhood had shaped my experience as a young adult traveler more than I realized. I had bought into those ideas, believed that there was a Right Way to dress and equip myself, just as much as the folks I was encountering around the world believed in a different Right Way. Over many miles, I reflected on why I thought acquiring the right gear would turn me into the person I wanted to be. Where did my packing list come from? Though I didn’t know it at the time, these questions would shape my academic research for the next decade.
SunLit: Place this excerpt in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole? Why did you select it?
Gross: World War II radically reshaped the outdoor industry. The preceding couple of chapters look at the U.S. military’s equipment and clothing program and how that spread around the country through army surplus. This excerpt follows those chapters. I selected it because it shows how Colorado was a hub of innovation in the outdoor industry in the 1950s and beyond.
SunLit: Tell us about creating this book. What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?
Gross: There are two important influences that informed the project before I sat down to write.
First, my childhood: Family road trips when I was a child shaped my romantic association with the wild and with mountains in particular. When I was 10 or 11 I longingly read my brother’s “Boy Scout Handbook” and ticked off the merit badges I imagined I would have earned if only I had been eligible to join that club.
UNDERWRITTEN BY
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Ms. Guth’s 11th-grade history class introduced me to Rocky Mountain School painter Albert Bierstadt and his oversized canvases of sublime mountain beauty in Yosemite. Camping trips with my parents and siblings in western national parks taught me how to set up a tent, poke at a fire, and wear a hat to keep warm at night. For an urban upbringing, my young adult life was full of messages that the mountains were where to go to feel real. I listened to books on tape like “Hatchet” and “My Side of the Mountain,” where courageous boys (always boys) lived in trees and learned the ways of the woods.
Second, after college I had a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which supported a year of backpacking around the world so I could pursue the project, “Mountain Hut Systems and the Meaning of Wilderness.” Traveling in wild places in other countries introduced me to how outdoor recreation culture operated there and showed me what very American assumptions I brought with me to the trail.
SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of your craft and/or the subject matter?
Gross: I have no illusions about my craft being a solitary endeavor. This is a monograph but it was a team of supporters that brought me to the finish line. The scholarly process of individual work is driven by peer feedback. Conference presentations and talks, and even more importantly, writing groups, pushed me to expand the context I included, sharpen arguments, and bring what was in my head onto the page. Even the lonely archives were made a little less so by the friends who were there doing their own research at tables nearby.
This process means a broader, more interesting book: When a mentor at the Smithsonian passed on a copy of Kephart’s “Camping and Woodcraft” early on in my research, I didn’t just get a copy of an old book. I also learned how outdoor knowledge got shared and passed down. When a very smart reader reflected on their wearing of Army-Navy clothing, I knew I had to integrate that phenomenon into the surplus chapter.
SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?
Gross: Working consistently over many years was the biggest challenge. Writing was punctuated by big moves, new jobs, and many semesters of teaching. I didn’t always maintain focus on the book through all of those changes and activities, but I did always come back to it.
SunLit: What’s the most important thing — a theme, lesson, emotion or realization — that readers should take from this book?
“Shopping All the Way to the Woods”
Where to find it:
- Prospector: Search the combined catalogs of 23 Colorado libraries
- Libby: E-books and audio books
- NewPages Guide: List of Colorado independent bookstores
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Gross: Some readers approach this topic with a misplaced nostalgia for a simpler time when the outdoors wasn’t so consumerist. I hope they realize through this history that that time never existed. Instead, the book shows that the outdoor industry developed in tandem with outdoor recreation itself. American outdoorspeople from 100 years ago had many of the same anxieties about buying too much gear getting in the way of their authentic engagement with nature.
SunLit: Walk us through your writing process: Where and how do you write?
Gross: The book was written in Madison, Wisconsin; Missoula, Montana; Munich, Germany; and Denver, Colorado. The research included visits to more than 25 libraries and archives (including corporate archives) in more than 10 states. I have been at work on the book since 2011. This matters because I write all over: quiet libraries, noisy coffee shops, with bad posture on my couch. I write meandering paragraphs to play with ideas and in furious fits to meet deadlines.
SunLit: What’s the best outdoor brand?
Gross: I never answer this question in the way that people would like. There is no best outdoor brand, of course. What gear works depends on where you live, what activities you are doing, your budget, and more. But the question itself is interesting to me, because it reflects a desire to rank brands, to ask a supposed expert for insider knowledge.
Any contemporary reader who is wondering about this shares much with the historical actors in my book who considered how what they wore would reflect on their identities. That’s a delightful connection across eras that I like to point out.
SunLit: Tell us about your next project.
Gross: Fifty years ago, the Denver Urban Renewal Authority razed a mostly Chicano neighborhood adjacent to downtown to build the Auraria higher education campus. Displaced Aurarians have been fighting to tell the story of their community ever since. As a public historian, I work with a community group to give history tours of the campus and put on public events to share the story.
A few more quick questions
SunLit: Which do you enjoy more as you work on a book – writing or editing?
Gross: Editing
SunLit: What’s the first piece of writing – at any age – that you remember being proud of?
Gross: A jointly written paper on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, with my best friend, in 11th grade
SunLit: What three writers, from any era, would you invite over for a great discussion about literature and writing?
Gross: Jane Austen, Robert MacFarlane, Arkady Martine
SunLit Do you have a favorite quote about writing?
Gross: “Kill your darlings.”
SunLit: What does the current collection of books on your home shelves tell visitors about you?
Gross: I have an eclectic approach to organization.
SunLit: Soundtrack or silence? What’s the audio background that helps you write?
Gross: Silence.
SunLit: What music do you listen to for sheer enjoyment?
Gross: Musicals.
SunLit: What event, and at what age, convinced you that you wanted to be a writer?
Gross: I suppose I listen to outside voices for affirmation. Mrs. Frost, my third grade teacher, told my mom I should be a writer and she always reminds me of that.
SunLit: Greatest writing fear?
Gross: I have nothing new to say.
SunLit: Greatest writing satisfaction?
Gross: Making people laugh.