Women in Paddling: Why Women Only?

June-July 2000

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.

by Becky Bowlsbey

Sometimes, I reflect on how I started a company that takes women only on backcountry camping expeditions. Raised in a household where duties and rules were defined by gender, I spent most of my adult years disproving gender stereotypes, convinced that nurture was the winning selection in the nature vs nurture debate. And I still believe that. So why have I chosen to leave the men home, when operating tours in the backcountry?

The revelation that women might indeed learn backcountry camping skills more easily in the absence of men seeped into my reality over the course of several months of camping alone. Having grown up camping with family, and later with boyfriends, it became rapidly apparent as I camped alone the first few times that I had learned few camping skills in the company of so many men. In my gender un-segregated life, I had been happy to let the men do certain jobs: operate the camp stove, build the fire, set up the tent-not to mention the imbedded assumption that the men would protect me from all sorts of wild animals, intruders and bad weather. When I began to take on all the responsibilities around camp, I realized how dependent on men I had been.

The logic behind women-only tours is the same that draws women toward women-only educational institutions: where all of the leadership roles are reserved for women, they are more likely to venture into terrain that used to be considered the realm of men.

Then there's the primordial issue of boys and girls camping together, otherwise known as the "birds and the bees". No matter how committed we are to enjoying the backcountry and learning how to operate in it, the interaction of the sexes injects elements which distract from our ability to completely embrace the solitude that the backcountry offers. Rather than hearing the shrill chirping of the cicadas or the whispering dance of the wind, we hear the thumping of our own hearts. Rather than surrender to the primal silence that bears the power of transformation, we stay in the mental arena, formulating the right thing to say. And in so caring about the self that we project in the presence of men, we miss completely the point of spending time in the backcountry: the possibility to re-create ourselves.

Transformation is more likely to occur in the wilderness, where removed from the noises and trappings of modern life, we most often reconnect with a self that has become buried under layers of expectations and conformity. But in order for revelations and change to occur, we must feel comfortable in being made completely vulnerable by nature. My experience has indicated that mixed-gender groups hinder this process.

Without men, women often feel more comfortable in spending a long, relaxing morning in camp over coffee, where they can obtain a deep repose from the bustle of daily life. For women whose daily lives often resemble a marathon of daily goals to be met, it is often a new experience to share the company of other women in a setting where destinations or distances marked do not feature in their interactions with each other and with nature. This genre of interface with nature enables women to experience the peacefulness that heals the soul.

Having imbibed the tranquillity that results from a man-less nature, women often feel an increased confidence when the issues of daily life raise the stakes. The fact is, the wilderness still maintains a mystique of being a man's domain where women without male company are not to be considered safe. But when women spend time in men's domain while guided by a new set of rules written by women, they slay the fear-of-the-wild-without-men dragon and are likely to continue slaying other dragons at the home front.

The editor of Escape Magazine projected during the 1999 World Congress on Adventure Travel and Ecotourism that women-only travel would constitute one of the fastest growing segments of the travel industry during the coming century. I still elect to join men in the backcountry from time to time. But I do so to enjoy their company. Most of the time, however, I elect to bask in nature on my feminine terms.

Becky Bowlsbey is the owner of SacredPlay Nature Tours LLC, guiding women-only expeditions into the high desert of southern Arizona. Phone: (800) 411-2367. E-mail: info@sacredplay.com Web: www.sacredplay.com ©