Conference turris::womannotes-v3

    I've always loved the wilderness! My parents always had trouble keeping
    me in the house because I'd always be off in the woods somewhere
    exploring or building forts. You know that commercial for Prince
    spaghetti where the mother yells "Annnnnnthony?".  Well my mother was
    always yelling "Lauuuurie" and not just on Wednesday nights :-)
    But being a pasta lover I would usually be home early on Wednesday
    nights :-)
    
    Worst memory of the wilderness? Being stung by a nest of angry
    wasps/bees twice. Once when I was 5ish and then when I was about 12ish.
    Now I know why my sister told me not to stick my hand in that hole :-)
    
    Best memory of the wilderness?  One word sums it up for me, Alaska! I
    spent two weeks in and around Cordova (about 100 South of Anchorage)
    backpacking and trailbuilding with the AMC. Wow! I'll write more about
    it here when I have more time.
    
    Has anyone out there been on any trips with "Alaska Women of the
    Wilderness"?  You can send e-mail if you want rather than posting
    something here. I'm considering doing a 3 week trip with them next year
    and I'd like to know what other women thought about them.
    
    Uh-oh, "Thirty Something" is on. Gotta run,can't miss that!
    
    Twenty_something_Laurie

	I grew up an an area many would consider the "wilderness";
	West-Central Maine.   Strong, Maine to be exact.  (If you
	know where Portland is, go 100 miles NW into the mountainous
	boonies and you'll find Strong.)  I took for granted being
	able to walk into my back yard and have nothing but forests
	for miles.

	In the Spring, Summer, and Fall my favorite passtime was to
	ride my horse, Abby, for hours and hours and hours.  There
	were so many trails in the woods one could ride to neighboring
	towns and never see a road.  I felt safest with her, as opposed
	to by myself, because I knew that if a bear was nearby she's
	sniff it out and be headed home at lightspeed.  The only time
	I felf UNsafe riding in the woods was during hunting season.
	Being a chestnut color, she could easily be mistaken for a 
	dear or a moose by trigger-happy hunters.  My solution was to
	sing at the top of my lungs or keep a running monologue as
	we trekked thru the woods.

	During the Winter I strapped on my cross-country skis and again
	headed for the woods.  At this time the riding paths had been
	transformed into snow mobile tracks.  The tracks were hard and
	smooth: perfect for reaching warp-speed on skis.  However, this
	could be dangerous as cross country skis are long and difficult
	to maneuver around trees.  Falling off the track could result in
	being buried in 5 feet of snow.  

	Here in Nashua, surrounded by malls, highways, parking lots, and
	people, I often wish I could just run into my old forest and get
	away from it all....

	Sue 

    You know, this is one of the places where I have an atavistic, sexist
    behavior model at work.  I won't go into the wilderness in a
    women-only, or even women-mostly, manner.  I, personally, don't feel
    safe.  Intellectually I know that women are just as capable of taking
    care of themselves in the wilderness as men are, that they make fine
    and capable members of search and rescue teams, that as individuals (or
    as teams) they may be physically stronger and *more* knowledgable about
    all the skill sets necessary to survive in the wilderness.
    
    I still want, emotionally, male muscles and deep voices to accompany me
    into the wilderness.
    
    My particular favorite form of wilderness experience is canoeing.  I've
    done it in northern Wisconsin and Michigan, northern Maine and along
    the Maine seacoast.  I haven't been, literally for years, because I
    don't have reliable male companionship to accompany me.  And that's a
    shame.
    
    Alison

Last year, when she was about six months pregnant, Janice went on a one week
solo backpack in the Yosemite back country. This year, I expect she may want
to go off on a snow camping trip. We both love the wilderness. She is the one
who got ME into backpacking (we both learned rock climbing together).

	-- Charles

    
    Hi Charles, I got Steve into rock climbing (-: -- and sometimes
    I wish I hadn't.  He's such a fanatic now.
    
    I've been on solo backpacks and solo extended bicycle touring
    trips (not exactly wilderness, but into outlying areas).
    
    Now Alison, you're right, it's not very rational.  Are you sure
    you don't go because you don't 'feel safe' without a male or is
    it because you don't really want the experience without a male?
    Two different things, and I can see the second one, sometimes I
    don't feel like going out if Steve won't (just cause I want to do
    something with him).
    
    IMHO, if you *really* wanted to go, you'd find a way.
    
    Oh, and it's incredible, some of the women I've met who work for
    a living in this outdoor stuff!  So capable, knowledgeable,
    self-confident, experienced.  Seeing what you've written and
    what I know very well with my own two eyes just doesn't jibe.
    
    And another thing - I get all kinds of men and women coming on
    the trips I plan - hikes in the mountains, skiing in the woods, etc.
    Even womannoters ;-)  Most of them don't even know me.
    I can't believe they'd come if they thought it wasn't safe.
    
    I know you said it's irrational as you said, but your note felt
    like a slap in the face - my face.
    
    

    Further disclaimer.
    
    My sister is one of the folks who leads wilderness trips -- I *really,
    really know* that women can do this stuff.  My apologies to anyone who
    I offended, it truly wasn't meant.
    
    Good point about maybe just not wanting the experience if it doesn't
    include men.  May very well be the case, and I just hadn't made the
    differentiation.
    
    Alison

    
>>> My particular favorite form of wilderness experience is canoeing.  I've
>>> done it in northern Wisconsin and Michigan, northern Maine and along
    
    You know when I was younger I used to think of Mid-West states like
    Wisconsin as a real boring place. I guess I thought this because it was
    flat and there wasn't a lot to do there. THen I went out to Minnesota
    on a business trip and was off and on living there for about a year. 
    It was incredibly beautiful and there were tons of outdoorish things to
    do there. There weren't any mountains to climb but there was plenty of
    hiking, great canoeing and all kinds of other things. I went on a
    canoeing trip in Minnesotta and it was great! There was a lot of
    wildlife and these big turtles (about the size of a washing machine) in
    the water. Totally freaked me out the first time I saw one while
    canoeing. I thought we were going to be  attacked by the creatue of the
    black lagoon :-) But I think they are very gentle animals. In the
    summer the weather there was just perfect. It was about 80 most of the
    time and sunny a lot (or at least when I was there). The other nice
    thing about it was that it wasn't crowded like a lot of places in
    Eastern MA and some parts of NH are.
    
    Now Winter in Minnesota is a different thing all together :-) It gets
    cold there and it *stays* cold. I'm talking a temperature in the teens.
    It's not like New England where one winter day it will be 20 and the
    next it will be 50. A lot of folks up there go ice fishing in the
    Winter. Although from the ice-fishing stories I heard it sounded like
    people did more partying and card-playing than actual fishing ;-)
    Of course it's a great place to x-c ski!
    
    Laurie

    
    re .6:
    It's okay, Alison.  No offense taken.
    

	Article from my hometown. Not sure where to post this.
    	Mods, please feel free to move it to a better spot if you wish.

	Dana

	from the Springfield (Ma.) Union-News 12-11-90
	----------------------------------------------
	
	Women rack up 50 years in club
	------------------------------
	by Trudy Tynan

	  LUDLOW (AP) - They tie their own flies during trout season, 
	bag their own bucks during deer season and pass on their wood-
	craft to their daughters and granddaughters.
	  The 50-year old Hampden County Women's Rod and Gun Club,
	which bills itself as the nation's oldest organization of 
	sportswomen, now includes three generations of some families
	among its 65 members. And no men need apply.
	  "We were and still are just a bunch of women interested
	in the outdoors," said Dee Anderson, who still occasionally 
	heads out to the shooting range. in 1940, at age 16, she 
	served as the club's first secretary.
	  Her mother was also a charter member and her father, a long-
	time game warden, was one of the club's biggest boosters.
	  Originally they called themselves Fisherettes, "but we soon
	decided that didn't have enough oomph," Anderson said. And it
	didn't reflect the interest of many club members in competitive
	shooting. At the time, women were barred from pistol and other
	competitions run by all-male sportsmen's clubs, she said.
	  			* * *

	  "It really didn't seem fair, especially when so many of us
	were such good fishers and hunters," said Betty Pierzchala, 73, 
	another charter member of the club's pistol team.
	  Anderson's grin broadened as she paged through the club's
	scrapbook of early newspaper clippings in which the membership
	was described as "bagging hubby's supper" and "hardy housewives
	willing to leave dishes unwashed in the sink to drop their lines
	by 4 a.m."
	  But the women said that while writing styles may have changed
	in the past half-century, some other things haven't. And it can 
	still be a bit lonely for a woman in the woods. Many, whether they
	were born in the 1960s or 1920s, said they grew up thinking they
	were the only girl who liked to hunt and fish.
	  "Being a girl, it's kind of difficult," said Kathy Dziak, 24,
	of Chicopee, pointing out that men tend to swear when they encoun-
	ter a woman hauling in fish while they are not. "And it's even
	worse when it comes to hunting."
	  "It's nice just to have other women to talk to," said her friend, 
	Kathy Heil, also 24. "And you can learn so much from these women."
	  Women like Louise LaCourse, who admits to being in her 80s, and
	recently landed an eight-foot shark while saltwater fishing in
	the Azores.
	  "I was always a fisherman, mostly fly fishing. I tied my own flies,"
	said LaCourse. "My highest ambition as a child was to own my own
	reel and boots. When I was 5-years-old my father got me a pair of 
	knee-high boots. They were the treasure of my life."
	  An active conservationist, LaCourse still serves on the East 
	Longmeadow Conservation Commission, which she helped found in the 
	1970s. And she is sought out for her proficiency in locating and
	identifying medicinal and edible herbs and plants.
	  "One summer we took a bunch of girls camping and we gathered all
	our own food," she said.
	  Over the past 50 years, the women have helped stock trout, grow
	food for migrating wildfowl and maintain wetlands and forests, as
	well as sponsoring shooting teams. And they have never been shy
	about speaking out against pollution.
	  "Being out in the streams fishing, we knew what was being done to 
	the water, with all the garbage and chemicals that were being
	dumped, and it made us sick to see it," said Pierzchala. "Many
	people thought we were terrible when we'd point out some business
	that was polluting the rivers. But we never backed down, because
	we knew we had to do something to protect the environment for our 
	children."
	  Posession of a hunting or fishing license is no longer a requirement 
	for membership and some women are just hikers and bird-watchers, 
	according to club president Sandy Jurczyk of Monson.
	  But she said that the club has had to take a closer look at appli-
	cants in recent years. "Some women apply just so they can put down
	on their application for a pistol permit that they belong to a
	sporting club," she said. "And we don't want to be used like that."
	  Jurczek said she became involved in the club "17 or 18 years
	ago," after taking her children for a ride.
	  "We met two women, who had come out to water some chestnut trees
	they had planted on their way to do some target shooting," she said.
	"And I thought this is just fantastic."
	  "This was something these women in their 60s and 70s could still
	do," she continued. "And something that I, with three young children,
	could do too. I just brought the kids along."
	

    Dana, I grew up in Spfld too -- howcome I don't know you?  (and why do
    I think I should know everyone from Springfield? :-)
    
    I spent my elementary school years in the woods and swamps around the
    inlet end of Watershops Pond, back when it was still woods where kids
    could go out in winter and roast potatoes in a campfire without being
    in someone's backyard.  We fished, built rafts, had campfires, played
    hide-and-seek, whittled, and were generally wild, hoyden kids.  It's
    where I learned to love the woods.

			The Last Frontier
			----------------

Rain.  A cold, miserable rain that made you wish you were stranded on an
island in the South Pacific.  This was the weather when I arrived in
Anchorage, Alaska in the Summer of 1987 to participate on a trail building
trip sponsored by the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC).  A massive clump of
frozen whipped cream was how I always imagined Alaska, its land covered
with thousands of miles of barren, snow-covered earth.  A bitter wind would
wipe over its surface with the fierceness of a grizzly bear.  Of course
red-faced eskimos bundled in fur were also a part of my image of Alaska.
Slowly the eskimos would make their way to their tiny igloos trying to
shield their faces from the sharp, piercing explosions of the wind.  Rain
didn't fit into my picture of Alaska.  I just couldn't image an eskimo
holding an umbrella. 

Cold, miserable rain and mosquitoes. Mosquitoes as plump as the sugarplum
fairy filled the air.  This was the situation while fourteen other
volunteers and I built a new hiking trail through a remote section of the
Chugach National Forest approximately one-hundred miles south of Anchorage.
Some people wore bug nets over their heads to keep the mosquitoes from
getting in their eyes and flying up their noses. I refused to wear such a
contraption afraid that my head would feel like it was stuck inside a
screened-in porch. I was not used to days with twenty hours of daylight and
it took me several days to get adjusted to this condition.  During the day
we would remove stumps, rocks and trees from the path of the hiking trail. 
Covered in mud and itching from head to toe, we would return to our base
camp at the end of the day making jokes about our predicament and making
bets on when the rain would end. 

Clearings. When the rain did cease, Alaska's refreshing beauty unfolded
before us like the petals of a blooming rose. Every scent and sight was
more alive and vivid than any other place I had backpacked in New England
or the Western United States.  The scenery was so picture perfect that I
expected John Denver to pop out from behind a tree holding a cereal bowl, a
box of Raisin Bran and singing "Sunshine on My Shoulders". We were
surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Many had glaciers draping their sides
and many were unnamed. One of the favorite pastimes of many town folks was
glacier watching. People picnicked and partied at the bottom of glaciers,
listening to their mighty rumblings and exploding with excitement by the
mini tidal waves created when chunks of the glaciers broke off and tumbled
into glacier rivers. 

Eagles. Eagles that soared over us like giant and majestic American flags
waving proudly in a breeze. Their long wing span cast eerie and powerful
shadows on the ground.  In the hills grazed mountain goats and off the
docks of Cordova swam many fuzzy-faced seals.  Although I didn't see any
bears first-hand, there was evidence of their presence all around our camp.
Their footprints and droppings made it clear that they were there lurking
near us. Once when I was approaching a bend in the trail, I stood in terror
for a few seconds when what I thought was a baby bear standing at the bend
turned out to be an old brown stump. 

Reasons.  I wondered why I had come to Alaska. I wondered why I had always
been fascinated with this vast, remote land. There's an untamed restlessness
inside of me over which I have little control. It drives me to seek
adventure and to explore new territory. It's a passionate hunger that
always has me thirsting for more out of life. Alaska has always been a
symbol of independence and the ultimate wild to me. An untamed world where
my wanderlust could nurture from its boundless challenges. A land so wild,
so free, so beautiful that I found it ironic that people have measured it's
wealth by the oil and gold it's produced. It's true wealth lies in its
wildness.

Alaska. The last frontier. A mysterious and remote land where the fates of
many brave men and women who have dared to challenge its ruggedness lie
buried forever. Buried in the silt-covered glacier rivers gushing through
the earth like the crowds of people pouring into Alaska during the gold
rush of the late eighteenth century.  Buried inside Alaska's majestic white
beast called Mount McKinley. And buried in the thousands upon thousands of
glaciers, the mighty glaciers that drip down the sides of mountains like
tears flowing down the cheeks of people who have lost loved ones amidst
Alaska's deadly beauty. 


			Laurie Langelo

			Original-2/88
			Revisted-4/8/91

	The April, '91 issue of Outside magazine has a (too long
	to type in) article titled "The Disappeared" about women and 
	nature/the outdoors. Well worth reading. 
        At the end is an extensive reading list, as follows.

	"The Death of Nature" Carolyn Merchant
	"The Science Question in Feminism" Sandra Harding
	"The Mermaid and the Minotaur" Dorothy Dinnerstein
	"The Woman That Never Evolved" Sarah Blaffer Hardy
	"The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe" Marija Gimbutas
	"Primate Visions" Donna Haraway
	
	Two volumes of essays:
	"Biological Woman: The Convenient Myth"
	"Female Primates: Studies by Women Primatologists"

	"Woman the Gatherer" original paper by Sally Slocum 
    
    Dana