Get Out and DO IT: Hammock Camping

When some people need a temporary job they bag groceries. I worked in education. Educational psychology/philosophy holds that the major ways people learn are visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. In other words: by seeing, by hearing, and by doing.

Sleeping in a hammock may not sound difficult, but it is far from instinctual and there are a lot of things to learn by doing it.

Almost everything I know about hammock camping I learned in my backyard, but how did I get there to begin with?

Food & Sex in the Garden of Good and Evil OR Dule of Doves Part II

Welcome back to the sordid reality show that is my backyard! In case the title doesn’t make it obvious enough: this post may be inappropriate for very small children and NSFW, depending on your boss’ sense of humor.

The Best Outdoor Job Ever

One summer I had the best outdoor job ever. However, I didn’t realize it because I had my head high in the stratocumulus clouds that surround the Ivory Tower of Academia. At the time I was very distracted by the biology of crayfish and invasive species and didn’t realize what a great gift I had been given. My keen interest in invasive species was what opened the door for me.

The waters of Middle-of-Nowhere New England has been plagued with invasive Eurasian Milfoil and zebra mussels, among many other things, for my entire life. Much of Maine is free of these pests and when I heard about a summer job to help keep it that way I jumped at the opportunity.

The Lake Whozawhatsit Association wanted to pay me to sit at the boat ramp of their lake four days a week and inspect all the boats that were launched for aquatic plants. Before we get into the whys and wherefores of what an awesome job this was, we need to have a short primer on the nomenclature of Maine lakes and ponds. A great deal of Maine lakes and ponds have two names. One name is usually a locally-coined common sense name involving the location of the lake and the word “lake” or “pond”. Example: China Lakes, Unity Pond, Rangeley Lake, etc. The second name for many Maine lakes is often the official one. The name often sounds like it has come from the local indigenous dialect, which it may or may not have. It is my suspicion that folks “from away” are behind these names because they have influence (coughcoughmoneycough), find the names to be quaint and/or exotic, and like what having a house on Lake Whozawhatsit does for their social standing back in Boston and/or their property values. There are additional rules for the second, often official lake name: 1.) the more “w’s”, “r’s”, and “t’s” the better 2.) the name must end in “ett”, “cook”, “ook”, or “ic” whenever possible/plausible.

Now, as I was saying: Lake Whozawhatsit Association wanted to pay me to sit at the boat ramp of their lake four days a week and inspect all the boats that were launched for aquatic plants. Lake Whozawhatsit is a small shallow lake in Somerset County with one outlet that eventually joins the Kennebec River. The lake association was concerned that if any invasive aquatic plants were introduced into the lake that it would literally be choked with weeds due to the shallow depth of the water. My main job consisted of inspecting all incoming watercraft, collecting any suspicious plant matter, educating boaters about the new state “weed sticker” and conducting surveys of boaters in order to build a database. I also helped people launch and trailer their boats and participated in aquatic and emergent vegetation surveys. To the best of everybody’s knowledge I was the first person in the state of Maine to be paid to do this job.

My office for the summer

Now for the real meat of my work day and why this was the best outdoor job ever: if I came in early I could have a swim in the lake before going on duty, if there were no boaters around I was allowed to fish from the dock, read, or listen to audiobooks in my car, but

Photographic proof that I can indeed catch a fish! This is probably one of the last fish I caught in Maine

mostly I just got to sit by the lake and observe the natural world around me ALL SUMMER, for money! I had a picnic lunch every day, which I sometimes bought from the little deli at the end of the access road, and when I was working afternoons I’d stop at Gifford’s on my way in to get a big milkshake or an ice cream cone. It was a really great job!

One of my supervisors suggested that I begin keeping a journal of my observations of animals and plants, which sparked my interest in phenology and my eventual foray into nature blogging. I saw some very interesting things that summer.

Loon checking out the spillway

Loons nested on LakeWhozawhatsit and a few times they came into the inlet near the boat launch. I’d seen loons (very) up close as a child but it was still exhilarating to watch them feeding on small fish. 

Loon in the inlet

Bold Mallard

I spent a great deal of time watching two mallard hens with broods of ducklings. I decided that one hen was older and more experienced than the other because her ducklings were “better behaved” in response to her fussy quaking. The younger mallard hen was pretty lackadaisical with her fluffy yellow and brown ducklings; they would be spread out all over the inlet instead of swimming in a tight formation behind their mother and they seldom responded immediately when she called to them. Eventually there were fewer ducklings in the younger hen’s brood; one or two less every time I returned to the lake. I found out why one day when I spotted a snapping turtle swimming lazily just beneath the surface of the water near the dock. The shell of this undoubtedly ancient reptile had a greater circumference than the hub caps of my car! I made a note to myself to be more cautious while swimming at the nearby sandy beach.

And then there were four…turtle snacks

There were many other interesting animals at the lake: nesting gray catbirds and kingbirds, a multitude of sunfish, a plethora of juvenile bass, and a glut of frogs. One day I saw a muskrat surreptitiously cutting tender shoots of grass. On a misty morning I walked out to the mouth of the inlet and sized up a great blue heron that stood just a long leap away from me on the opposite bank. A great blue heron is nearly as tall as I am and could put out my eye or kill me with one jab of its’ beak, so it was quite breathtaking to see one so close.

I got to know the rhythms of the area. I realized when there were suddenly a ton more snails below the spillway, when the pickerel weed and water lilies bloomed, and the social schedules of the bass and sunfish. Later in July I got to witness the alewives getting ready to migrate!

A shoal of alewives. I took this photo by hanging off the dock with my arms in the water.

One day I came to work and there was some sort of strange phenomena unfolding right in front of me. I didn’t know if it was pollution, plankton, pollen, or an algal bloom. Whatever it was, it was interesting and didn’t seem to harm any of the animals or plants in and around the lake.

Weird algal bloom at the spillway

Close up of weird algal bloom

One of the highlights of the summer was the bass fishing tournament. I’d never seen a tricked-out, pimped-out dedicated bass boat until that day. I witnessed boats that literally gleamed in the summer sun. I imagine some of them cost even more than my considerably over-priced education! I’m not sure how such a small lake rates a bass tournament with gigantic and/or very powerful boats but the winning fish were pretty impressive.

1st place

2nd place

Eventually the hatchlings became nestlings and then they flew away and the sunfish stopped guarding their round sandy beds. The alewives weren’t running down the spillway anymore and the water lilies stopped blooming. It was August and it was time for me to return to school from the working world, such as it was. I don’t remember my last day at Lake Whozawhatsit but I know, at the time, I didn’t appreciate what a great opportunity I had been given. Now all I have of my long summer days at Lake Whozawhatsit are memories that I can bring out when my job is really boring, it’s too hot to go outside, I can’t swim in fresh water because of alligators, I can’t catch any fish, or when I see a sad, grey, mute winter loon visiting the Gulf of Mexico in order to escape a cold winter in Maine.

P.S. I graduated from college ten years ago today. I don’t know exactly how I feel about that: the programs, faculty, and staff reinforced my existing outdoor ethic and propelled me to where I am today but my classmates made me a persnickety  grumpy, old crosspatch long long before my time.

The Great Apocalypse Pig Hunt

The Great Apocalypse Pig Hunt was born of an evolving concept. Originally it began as Camping in the Mountains Apocalypse Vacation. However, due to the fact that hubby and I just had to buy a few more guns it became Camp in the State Forest Apocalypse Trip. Finally it was decided that the best thing to do with all the vacation time we had accrued, and our lack of money, was to get out of town with almost all of our firearms and go hunt and camp in the swamp for a few days, in case the locals went all Walking Dead on December 21, 2012.

Then Murphy stepped in and decided that some heavy thunderstorms with the possibility of tornadoes would be appropriate. Then there was the small matter of my digestion. I have a gluten allergy. A few days before we were scheduled to depart we had been hunting in another part of the swamp all day. When we emerged we went to Red Bay Grocery to acquire some sustenance  The special involved sides of mac-n-cheese and Texas toast. I was cold, tired, and hungry and was not using my best judgement. I ate the mac-n-cheese AND the two pieces of Texas toast. Now for the uninitiated let me give a quick overview of my gluten allergy: I can’t eat things with wheat in them or else I basically get hay fever in my guts. It is not pretty. I will spare you the details. Some people scoff at those of us forced to be “gluten free” and accuse us of being a bunch of overly-sensitive, hippy, nances. However, if you were me and you ate a pop tart (stolen from your hubby) and then almost immediately began vomiting (and hubby laughed at you) then you would become a  believer. Enough about my digestion. Long story short: I was not feeling great when we departed for our trip.

The weather had been unseasonably warm up until the day we went to our camping and hunting area. That afternoon a cold front came roaring in from Canada and the Rockies. The temperature literally dropped about 20 degrees as we were making camp. Hubby opted for tent camping, as opposed to hammock camping, due to the precipitous drop in temperature. I’m unsure of his exact logic because he generally eschews 98% of spousal activities that might keep one warm while sleeping on the ground i.e. snuggling. We don’t even sleep on the same air mattress when camping, mostly because the last time I tried inflating the queen-sized mattress with the manual air pump I nearly had a heart attack. This time, due to the turbulent state of my guts, I nearly had a stroke inflating the two twin air mattresses.

The predawn conversation the next morning went something like this:

Hubby: Get up, it’s time to go hunting

Me: *baaaaaaarrrrrrrfffffffffffff*

Hubby: Are you coming or not?

Me: Just shoot me now and use my carcass for pig bait!

Hubby: (too enthusiastically) Ok!

Me: That is NOT what you are supposed to say! Besides, baiting game on public land is illegal, now go away before I shoot you!

Hubby went out in the swamp for a couple hours and I went back to sleep. Eventually I decided that I could move without dying. I’d been looking forward to this trip all year and I was going to go do my best to shoot a pig or a deer! I texted hubby and he came back to get me. As we set out to his previously scouted “magic pig spot” a crazy crop-dusting plane started buzzing the tree tops and we thought maybe the Apocalypse crazies were getting an early start.

We spent a few hours skulking around a really promising looking pig wallow, but the cool weather was not conducive to porcine hot-tubbing. Hubby decided that we should go walk around and try to flush something hoofed. We snuck around in another area of the swamp for several hours and then went to back to camp for lunch.

After lunch we took the truck and went around to another area we had hunted a couple of years before. On that occasion all we got were some ticks, but there was a lot of deer sign in the area. Unfortunately all of the deer we spotted or flushed on this hunt had mastered the uncanny skill of only exposing their rear ends to a clear and unimpeded view and were, therefore, unshootable! Imagine a deer that is imitating an ostrich with its head in the bushes instead of sand and you will get the general idea. Seriously, I think the deer had affixed brush to their upper halves above the shoulder, so even if they were broadside there was no way to tell if they were antlered! It was getting late in the afternoon and we were getting frustrated. We had a good idea of where the last two deer had gone and we were trying to cut around and ambush them when we ran into an old dude hunting with a big-arsed muzzle-loader. We stopped to talk with him for awhile and then continued to cut around where we thought the deer might have gone.

By then there was maybe 1.5 hours of daylight left at best, it was after all the Winter Solstice. We were both tired and hubby had just been grumbling about never being able to find the pigs, and something about me being bad luck, when he heard a sound ahead of us on the overgrown trail. I was maybe 25′ behind him and didn’t see what he was looking at initially. I thought it was a shadow under a bush until it moved, then I realized he was not too far away from a huge black sow and her two piglets. Hubby dropped down to a crouch in the middle of the trail and started doing some of his unintelligible pseudo-military-adapted-from-SCUBA hand signals. I eventually figured out that he wanted me to take the shot at the sow with him, but I hesitated because he was sort of between me and the sow and I was afraid that if I missed she might go after him, and get him, before I could take another shot. He realized I wasn’t going to fire and took a head shot.

Then all Hell broke loose! The sow took off, away from hubby fortunately, into the thickest brush imaginable, at close to the speed of sound with her hysterically squealing piglets behind her. Hubby took off after the sow, crashing through the brush, and I took off after him. The piglets doubled back, but when they got to me they turned on a dime and raced back toward hubby. He took a shot and dropped one of the piglets!

Still looking for the wounded sow, hubby left me in charge of the piglet and disappeared into the brush. The piglet was covered with coarse cinnamon hair and a couple of black markings, but otherwise looked like a typical farm pig. It weighed maybe twenty pounds. Hubby had shot it through the spine and it died pretty much instantly. I picked it up by its back feet and followed the crashing noises through the now very thick brush, after hubby.

I had a pig in one hand and my rifle in the other because it kept getting tangled in the underbrush if I slung it over my shoulder. I was getting very tangled in the brush and felt like Frodo from LOTR, when he is tangled in the giant spider web. Then hubby yells: “watch out, I think you’re over where the sow might be!” My thoughts went like this: “Lovely, I may encounter an angry wounded pig who will disembowel me while I am stuck in the brush clutching my rifle and her dead offspring!” At that moment I decided to take up handgun hunting with a large-caliber revolver in a chest holster.

When I finally got untangled we backtracked to where the sow had been standing when hubby took the shot. We couldn’t find any blood. I sat on the trail with the piglet carcass while hubby walked ever-widening concentric circles. Still no blood, other than where the piglet had fallen. We concluded that he had missed the sow and that we had better get back to the truck before we completely lost the light.

We went back to camp while I made some food and hubby cleaned the pig. We roasted the heart in the fire with some butter and ate it, but we saved the rest of the meat for home. Ever since I learned about feral swine, when we first moved here, I have been hoping one of us could harvest a nice oven-sized piglet for roasting, so I was very pleased with hubby’s kill. The cold weather became fortuitous now because it allowed hubby to hang the butchered carcass to cool thoroughly in the frosty air. It got so cold that night, 34F, that when I got up to have a pee in the predawn hours I was met with a frosted wonderland bathed in moonlight, instead of the pine savanna clearing where I had gone to sleep.

We packed up camp and went home. I roasted the front quarters of the piglet in the oven and it tasted like any other pork. As an added bonus I didn’t find any helminthic parasites in the flesh! Even though I didn’t get a pig, or a deer, on this trip it was great fun and I am really looking forward to doing it again in 2013. I will of course be getting both a deer and a pig and the pig will be bigger than hubby’s pig, but not too big, so it will still fit in the oven.

Me and Fish: Maine Lingerie During the College Years Part I

I became a resident of the great state of Maine when I was just barely twenty years old and living on my own for the first time. A privilege of Maine residency is a Maine fishing license, which I happily procured because, quite frankly, I had nothing better to do than fish. I worked in a lab on the coast with a daily three hour commute, so I pretty much went to work, fished on my breaks, came home, went to sleep, and went back to work. On weekends I went down to the lake, or the stream, to fish because a.) there was nothing else to do and b.) most of my money was spent on gas and c.) all of my friends still lived at home with their parents and had gone back there for the summer.

Since it was summer and quite hot, even for Maine, I would often wear a bikini top and cut-offs to fish in the lake, so I could work on my tan and wade out into the water if I felt like it. Interestingly I noticed that all sorts of men became very interested in giving me bait and fishing advice if they noticed I wasn’t having any luck. I had a good time at the lake and caught a lot of sunfish, small bass, and a lovely chain pickerel.

I was into catch-and-release at the time and my treble hook was just looped behind the cartilaginous gill rakers in the back of the pickerel’s throat, not actually piercing his flesh. Being young and foolish, I reached into his mouth to unhook him and that pickerel sank his gigantic-pointy-razor-sharp-freshwater-shark teeth into the ball of my thumb down to the bone! After considerable bleeding, unladylike cursing, and splashing around I did get the little bastard free from the hook, convinced him to stop gnawing on my hand, and let him go! I then immediately went out and spent my meager discretionary funds on two pairs of pliers  one pair with an extremely long needle-nose for unhooking ornery, ungrateful, toothy fish!

The college I attended, which is partially why I was living in Maine, basically required all students to own a pair of hip or chest waders. There were a lot of classes where they were a required piece of gear.

A class requiring waders

I happened to have a brown neoprene pair from L.L. Bean, which I wore in the stream, since I never liked wading there, even in the summer, because of the glut of snapping turtles. If it was hot out I’d just wear athletic shorts and a sports bra under said waders. I spent a lot of time down at the stream catching brook trout, one of my favorite fish. A friend of mine from high school came to visit and I took her to the stream. This is the same friend who used to camp and snorkel with me. When we were younger and out adventuring one day she introduced me to the dreaded “zipper current”. I get cold easily and often wear a wetsuit for water sports. Apparently one must be very careful when recreating in a cold stream in a wetsuit because a “zipper current” can magically unzip your suit and let in all the subzero water! I later introduced my friend to “sand currents”. “Sand currents” can be dangerous in lakes because if you are caught in one you will suddenly find that several pounds of the lake bottom is now inside your bikini bottom, trying to make its’ abrasive way up into your bottom! She took one look at my latest adventuring/fishing outfit and declared it to be my “Maine Lingerie”.

Modelling Maine lingerie and obligatory college student tie-dye

Me and Fish: The High School Years

Despite not catching any monster pike as a small child, I continued to fish throughout my teens, even my late teens when most other girls were hanging around at the mall or worrying about pimples. Having been brought up in a rather old-fashioned, strict, Middle-of-Nowhere New England manner, fishing was important to teenage me for a number of reasons:

1. I have always been obsessed with fish and catching them is a good way to observe them closely
2. Fishing is a good excuse to get out of the house
3. My boyfriend at the time also liked fishing. He had a fishing license and a driver’s license, both of which helped facilitate points 1 and 2.

We used to spend a great deal of time fishing at a small pond where my mother could easily keep an eye on us. The benefit of being watched like a hawk is that we could also get her to feed us on a pretty regular basis, something important to both teenage boys and girls. My boyfriend was kind of a hopeless goof and, despite his passion for fishing, wasn’t very good at it. I had to teach him how to lay down the dorsal spines on a fish you want to unhook and throw back!

When I wasn’t out fishing with my boyfriend I was harassing fish with my girlfriend, who I mentioned in my camping story. Being teenagers we of course frequented a swimming hole known as Devil’s Gorge. My friend and I spent a great deal of time trying to freedive to the bottom of the gorge to look at the monster brook trout down there. When it was super hot we’d wade up and down the rocky pools of the Cold River (yes it was bloody cold!) trying to catch various small fish in dip nets.

One time, when my friend was with me on a family tent camping trip, we took our snorkeling gear out into a glacial lake not too far from the Canadian border. The water was pretty clear for a Middle-of-Nowhere New England lake but as we swam farther from the beach the water became darker. Suddenly out of the gloom emerged three shapes nearly as long as we were! Having heard tales of eels as thick as telephone poles in this particular lake, we screamed, no easy feat with a snorkel in your mouth, and walked on water at a rapid pace back to the beach! If we weren’t girls folks would have thought it was the second coming. After a few minutes of strategizing we decided to confront the lake monsters and found them to be very large carp.

Me and Fish: River Monsters the Elementary Years

As a small child I caught plenty of sunfish and yellow perch but what I really wanted to catch was a Northern pike. I have always been obsessed with sharks and to me, in landlocked Middle-of-Nowhere New England, a pike was the closest thing there was to a shark. I also liked the idea of catching a fish that was about the same size I was.

My parents were not so enthused about this last idea, especially since I was not allowed to learn to swim, because of my delicate health, until I was about ten years old! The pike-catching obsession started way before then. There was a large creek, with deep swift brown water, that often flooded and was purported to be full of pike. If I wanted to fish there I was put in my bulky orange life preserver and had a six foot length of rope tied around my chest and secured to the nearest tree.

I haven’t caught my pike…yet. However, at least now I am bigger than the pike and know how to swim. If being tied to a tree didn’t put me off fishing as a youngster, I don’t think I will be quitting any time soon.

How I Would Make BOW Even Better

I feel very strongly about the impact of the Becoming an Outdoors Woman (BOW) program, especially in Florida. I think it is extremely important to  get women involved in outdoor pursuits for many reasons, other than how fantastically awesome the great outdoors is:

• Health-Women who get outdoors are going to be at least moderately active. Even if you are not going for a 50 mile hike or dragging a 150 lb buck out of the swamp alone, being outdoors and being active will improve your health. Women who are active are more likely to involve their families in outdoor activities, which in my opinion can strengthen families and instill a life-long love and respect for the outdoors in future generations. Being active and outdoors can also reduce stress, which will in turn improve health. Healthy women, and families, are economically more stable and able to be positive contributors to society.
• Environmental Education and Conservation- women who are engaged in outdoor activities will most likely want to know how the natural world works and how their choices impact our environment. Passing this curiosity and subsequent knowledge onto their families should initiate a positive cascading effect.
• Money-Many states, especially Florida, are very dependent on revenue from outdoor recreation. Many women control the family budget. If women, and their families, are spending money on outdoor activities that is bolstering the economy. In this state that also means increased revenue for conservation projects, which will in turn encourage even more participation in outdoor activities in a very positive cycle.
• Women’s Empowerment-Outdoor pursuits are not the domain of men and now more than ever it is socially acceptable for women to participate! Having the skills to independently hunt, fish, camp, or hike makes a woman feel strong and confident. Being able to share those skills with the people she loves gives her a great sense of satisfaction.

The folks who organize and run Becoming an Outdoors Woman (BOW) do a fantastic, smashing, brilliantly, great job on what I imagine is a small, minuscule  minute, ever-shrinking budget and with a largely volunteer staff. I have worked for a state government before and I have worked for a non-profit and done some outreach activities. I know how tough it can be, which makes me appreciate the efforts of the organizers even more. It’s always good to get input from a fresh perspective though, so here are a few thoughts on some things, in my opinion, that could make BOW even better:

• Add a falconry course. Falconry is a legal method of hunting in this state. I know there is a falconry association in Florida and maybe they’d be interested in volunteering their time?
• Add a bow fishing course. Sorry, I know absolutely nothing about bow fishing, except some of the regulations, that’s why a course would be awesome!
• How about an evening talk about alligator hunting?
• How about an evening talk about how to get involved with volunteering with various outdoor organizations such as the FTA, Audubon, etc.?
• Crossbows anybody? They’re legal here now. I think I want one but I’m not sure.
• Add an introduction to waterfowling class. I like to cook and eat ducks but I don’t know a thing about hunting them.
• More non-consumptive wildlife-focused offerings like maybe tree and plant ID, basic wildlife ID, butterfly & wildlife landscaping, etc.
• Get more young women involved. I’m always one of the youngest participants. Even though I generally have a low tolerance for young women I feel that it is good for them to get involved in outdoor pursuits. The younger we get them the better! I realize it may be hard for the 18-24 demographic to get involved because many are students and they can’t miss class. I also understand that older women are more established in their careers and that part-time jobs held by younger women are not usually very flexible. My suggestion for getting more young women involved would be to send informational fliers to colleges that have “outdoor” majors. There may be outing clubs, environmental science clubs, conservation biology clubs, etc. at these schools, which might be another connection to young women. One reason I’m not especially patient with younger women is that I swear they all act like sorority girls (where I come from sororities are looked upon negatively, it seems to be different here), but I say: heck bring on the sorority girls! I have seen some extremely feminine women who love outdoor activities, so I see no reason not to send information to the sororities, the sisters might even see BOW as a good bonding experience. BOW is far from “roughing it”. I learned recently that the Boy Scouts have coed groups called Venturing Crews and that they can include young women age 18-21. Send them some informational fliers, these girls already like outdoor activities and might enjoy a female-focused program.
• Get a more diverse group of women involved. In a past job I worked with teens and many of the youth informed me that “black people aren’t interested in outdoor activities”. This was heart-breaking for me because I love outdoor activities and wanted to share my passion with this group of young people, all of whom happened to be black. Outdoor pursuits are color-blind but I think we need to knock down some cultural stereotypes and/or barriers. Nobody should feel that they can’t pursue an outdoor interest because of the culture or ethnicity they hail from. I don’t have any great ideas on outreach to diverse groups here but I bet if the BOW organizers networked with folks like Rue Mapp of Outdoor Afro and Latino Outdoors that they would have some suggestions.
• Some sort of BOW participant mailing list. I know that BOW depends on sponsors and generous donations. I am positive I am not the only past participant who feels so strongly about the positive impact of BOW and who would be more than happy to help in some additional small way. If I got an email a month or two before BOW was scheduled that said something like: “We could really use [some safety pins for arts & crafts, paracord for survival  bracelets, dryer lint for fire starters, bags of marshmallows, packages of rubber bait, spools of fishing line, packages of fish hooks, etc.]“ I’d go buy one of those items, even though I lead a pretty humble existence, and bring it along or mail it to the organizers. Now imagine five other ladies did the same, or even a dozen. I bet those little things would help cut costs in the long run and help keep the BOW program going strong, even if there are budget cuts and the economy sucks.
• Target men. Yes, you heard me correctly. I’m pretty sure there are lots of men who wish the women in their lives (wives, girlfriends, sisters, cousins and/or daughters or nieces, etc.) would participate in outdoor activities with them. I’m pretty sure my husband wouldn’t be my husband if I sat around watching QVC and eating bon-bons all day, then wrinkled up my nose whenever I stepped outside. However, sometimes I don’t want to go do outdoor things with him, or let him teach me outdoor skills, until I’ve decided about it for myself and have the confidence to go with him. BOW has helped me there. BOW is meant as an introduction to beginners, among other things, and is very basic, easy, non-threatening, and far from “roughing it”. Men who want to encourage their female companions could treat it the same way that men who buy spa weekends for their significant ladies do. Paying for your special lady to attend BOW could be a very romantic gesture, a fantastic birthday gift, or great graduation present (especially if she controls the family purse strings, see above point). Send informational fliers marketing BOW in this manner to sportsman’s clubs and see if you get any bites.

Becoming an Outdoors Woman Ocala, Florida March 2013 Part III

I bear the crux of a delicate woman: I tire easily. After three days of adventuring I was about at my limit, so I was really hoping to get a good night’s sleep before the final day of Becoming an Outdoors Woman (BOW). However, a certain furry quadruped had something to say about that at about 2:00 am Sunday morning.

Arizona

I am a water, mountains, and trees kind of person. However, I find myself inexplicably drawn to the landscapes of the Southwest.