Becoming an Outdoors-Woman

This weekend my mom and I had the pleasure of attending the Becoming an Outdoors-Woman workshop at Silver Bay. BOW is an international program that focuses on educating and helping women become self-sufficient through outdoors-related skills. It’s a beautiful program with experienced instructors (who donate their time), enthusiastic volunteers, and amazing women from across the country.

I took:

• Basic fishing skills
• Wild edibles
• Beginning shotgun
• Outdoor survival

Basic fishing skills

We learned how the rod works, tying neat and tight knots, setting up a Texas rig, basic fish handling, and how to cast.

(I ended up winning a wishing pole at the Friday night raffle so excited to hit the water next!)

Wild edibles

We discussed foraging etiquette (always take less than ⅓), the best way to become experienced with wild edibles (track a single plant for a year), and we collected some seasonal plants. We made a sumac and raspberry leaf sun tea (really delicious!) and a soup (dandelion leaves, clover, pepper weed, Queens Anne’s lace, carrot, onion, celery).

Beginning shotgun

We learned proper firearm safety, handling, and shooting. Our instructors went above and beyond by giving us advice to tweak our technique to make sure we hit targets.

(I definitely missed more targets than I hit.)

Outdoor survival

We discussed the importance of being prepared before you hit the trail, we put together a survival pack, and then each of us lit a small fire with a striker and flint (and the cotton ball soaked in petroleum jelly helped).

We cannot wait to go back next year!