Pattie Gonia at Mountainfilm documentary festival in Telluride, CO.Sarah Silbiger/Washington Post/Getty
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Pattie Gonia, the drag queen and environmentalist, arrived in San Francisco on Friday afternoon and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge with $1 million more than when she set out on her journey last week.
The diversity and inclusion advocate completed the 100-mile trek from Point Reyes national seashore to San Francisco in full drag with her voluminous red wig and smokey eye. The effort was part of a campaign she launched to raise $1 million for eight nonprofits that aim to expand access and make the outdoors a more “equitable place.”
“Don’t let anyone ever tell you that you can’t make a difference,” she wrote on social media after completing the journey. “When I started being Pattie, everyone told me I was crazy. When I told people I wanted to do this fundraiser, [they] laughed in my face.
“Seven years later and I hope I can be a little bit of proof to you that combining who you are and what you’re good at to fight for the change you want to see in the world works.”
Pattie Gonia has become one of the most visible drag queens in the US in recent years. In 2024, Donald Trump’s campaign used footage of her with Kamala Harris as part of an attack ad against the then vice-president. Earlier this year she helped organize a demonstration at Yosemite, where LGBTQ+ climbers hung a trans pride flag on El Capitan.
“We flew the Trans pride flag in Yosemite to make a statement: Trans people are natural and Trans people are loved,” she said in a statement at the time. “We are done being polite about Trans people’s existence. Call it a protest, call it a celebration—either way, it’s giving elevation to liberation.”
Recently, she playfully challenged the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to a pull-up competition in a video that contrasted footage of her lifting herself with ease with video of Hegseth appearing to struggle through the exercise.
For the last week, she was on a solo trek on the California coast, getting in drag daily and setting up camp each night, while filming videos documenting the journey. She is set to perform her final show of the year in San Francisco on Saturday, “That is, if I can make it in time,” she said. Video posted to social media on Friday evening showed her strutting across the Golden Gate Bridge and ending her journey with cake.
By Friday, a GoFundMe for the project had raised more than $1 million from almost 35,000 individual donations.
