Published June 20, 2026 05:07AM
By all accounts, the bushtit is a small, gray-and-tan bird with a long tail and a short, stubby stature. Its plumage is rather boring in color, giving the gold ball-sized bird a plain appearance. It’s not the type of bird you’d expect a flamboyantly dressed drag queen to rave over—but then again, Efemmera Gendera is not your average drag performer.
Efemmera Gendera is the drag name of Fiona Skye, 29, cofounder of Drag Me Outside. The urban hiking club in Portland, Oregon, fuses queer community with biology, and does so with campy, kitschy energy. Skye earned her master’s degree from the University of Kentucky in 2025; she wrote her thesis on the bushtit.
“I always joke that I got my master’s in bushtits, so I have degrees in both bush and tits, and those are my drag credentials,” Skye told me over the phone.
Skye and Everett Hosp, 27, who performs as a drag king under the name Thespis D. Light, are especially qualified for these campy, inclusive hikes—between them, they have decades of wildlife-and-environment experience.
Dressed in full glam, the duo encourages high heels on the trails, but welcomes all walks of life. Their goal, they said, isn’t to summit a mountain but to take people on accessible, leisurely strolls through Portland’s natural areas, and teach them how to simply be in nature.
“We are just a couple of funny little trans drag performers who like to get dressed up and go outside and teach people things,” Skye said. “While doing that, we’re educating people about things they might not otherwise have thought about? Ecology is international, and we’re all on the same planet. We’re building community in the process.”
Skye and Hosp met when they were both new drag performers in the Portland area. They connected over their shared love of biology—and Pattie Gonia.
“We had this idea of following in Pattie Gonia’s footsteps because we love her so much, and we were like, ‘Hey, let’s bring nature and education to drag,” Skye said.
They started giving tours in March and have since amassed thousands of followers on Instagram. Their social media feeds have been flooded with overwhelming support, but the two say they are most inspired by non-traditional learners and the diversity of attendees they have met on their hikes: older people, younger generations, members of the queer community and allies, self-proclaimed non-hikers, those with advanced degrees, and those without.
“It’s been so heartwarming to see the range of people who are drawn to this space,” Hosp said, adding that a part of their work is making hiking safe for all people, especially those who might otherwise feel uncomfortable on the trail alone. “We encourage people to come as they desire to be. It doesn’t matter what you wear as long as you wear clothes suitable for the weather.”
Hosp spent five years as a park ranger focusing on interpretive work and community outreach. Before that, he was a wildlife rehabilitator in Florida and grew up hunting with his father in Connecticut.
“While out in the field with my dad hunting, I learned so much about ecology that you could never learn in a classroom. There are some things that you just have to be outside experiencing to understand, and that kickstarted a lifelong love of wildlife, ecology, nature, and science—and a connection to the land,” Hosp said.
That deep connection to the natural world also shaped the two’s understanding of identity and queerness in nature.
“Because, oh boy, it’s there. Outside is gay. Period,” Hosp said. “What we are doing is intrinsically a part of what’s going on in society. We are students, but we are also teachers. We are people of this land, of this community. Pretending that nature and queerness aren’t all a part of the same thing and not educating about it is going to be our downfall.”
Community and feeling a sense of belonging in the outdoors, especially as a trans person, can save a person, Hosp and Skye said.
“Being able to stand out in the woods and say, ‘I am here. I am trans. I am a drag king, and I’m not going anywhere,’ feels amazing and insane in a way that I never would have been able to describe to 16-year-old me, who had no idea that being happy as yourself was a possibility,” Hosp said.
Skye and Hosp say they hope their work inspires everyone—especially younger people—to listen to their hearts and forge their own path.
“For folks who are looking up to us, I see you, and I love you,” Skye said. “Anyone who is trans in the United States right now, but specifically trans youth, there is a future for you, and we are fighting for you.”
