Wild women
In greater numbers than ever, women are enjoying the beauty of the West through outdoor activities.

Story by Susan English, Photography by Brian Plonka
The Spokesman-Review

Brian Plonka - The Spokesman-Review Joy Clark paddles along the shoreline of Newman Lake at dawn. Clark devotes a huge amount of time teaching others how to handle a canoe and being respectful of the water. "I'm sharing something I love to do." -- Joy Clark, outdoor enthusiast

Traditionally, men outnumbered the women headed for the mountains and the forests and the streams thick with trout. They returned with meat and fish and a kinship forged in an environment that fosters such bonding.

Hunting and fishing are, and always have been, about ritual -- a rite of autumn, a rite of manhood, a right. In the fall when the elk bugle on the ridges, in the spring when mayfly hatches drive trout wild with desire, the wilderness calls.

Women like Diane Moe, Carrie McKinley and thousands of others hear it, too. They walk the trails through the woods, along ridgelines and down canyons, seeking a way to slow down in a high-speed culture.

The overarching motivation for these women is not exercise and fresh air, says McKinley. It's more spiritual in nature.

"Our religion is the outdoors, in a way," McKinley says.

"When I am out there, I feel whole," Moe says.

"Even when the game gets away, hunting's almost secondary to what's happening around me in the woods. It's the color of the woods, the sounds of the leaves rustling, the smell of the air -- the whole sensual part of hunting brings it together. It's like being one with everything around me.

"When I do get the game, it's 'Thank you, God, for letting me have this animal.' In that sense, hunting is very spiritual to me," Moe says.

Sometimes she hunts with men -- her husband and a group of his friends -- but increasingly she hunts, and hikes, skis and fishes with women like McKinley, whom she met through the Women in the Outdoors program.

"I understand why men like to commune in the outdoors," says McKinley. "Sure, they may say that they're hunting, but they're not. They're bonding."

McKinley started the Women in the Outdoors program in the Inland Northwest. It's part of the Inland Empire Chapter of the National Turkey Federation.

The 2-year-old program sponsors workshops ranging from canoeing and hiking to turkey-calling and survival.

"I think we have lost touch with who we really are. Ladies want to be in a situation where they can get their hands in the dirt. They call it Mother Nature for a reason. Ladies leave these workshops changed," says McKinley.

For a lot of women, a single wilderness experience, rather than an organized workshop, changed their lives.

When she was 19, Joy Clark and some friends drove 12 hours from their home in Nebraska to ski in the Colorado Rockies. The mountains affected Clark so deeply that as she drove away she became resolute that's where she would live.

"Where I grew up, the water runs brown and flat," Clark says. "The reason I came to the Northwest and the reason I stay is the water runs clear and there are mountains. When I feel stressed, I always go to a river or stream that runs fast. Water that runs swift and clear speaks to me."

Clark leads women-only outings, such as evening canoe trips on the Little Spokane River and moonlit cross-country skiing on Mount Spokane, sponsored by the Spokane Parks Department.

"Typically the women who participate in the outdoors activities in our program are married to men who don't," McKinley says.

"Most of the women have never done any canoeing or skiing before and it's a big adventure for them," says Clark, a recreation management student at Spokane Falls Community College. "They come because they think they are safe; in women-only classes there's no competition, no arguments. The women are very nurturing. I always say women are careful to replace the divots."

Talk of retreating to the wilderness to feed the soul doesn't surprise Linda Hart, the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Spokane.

"In the late 20th century, we did lose track of the natural world," says Hart. "I see the movement back to nature as part of the overall shift in our culture that's been going on for about 10 years now, which is trying to get back to some kind of rootedness . . . to find a true ground."

There's a long history of people looking to fill their souls in the wilderness, she says. Nineteenth-century transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau retreated to the woods for a spiritual experience.

The abundance of stunning landscape in the Northwest may explain why Washington state has the lowest percentage of churchgoing people in the nation, says Patricia O'Connell Killen, a professor of American church history at Pacific Lutheran University. Mountains and rivers become almost religious shrines for some.

Hart has a different theory. "There's something about the Western individualism that has an impact on church attendance," she says. "Doing spirituality in nature is a very individual thing. It's not a communal experience."

"I don't find that spirituality or religion and the natural world are separated out from one another," says Hart. "The transcendentalists are a strong part of my religious heritage, and they really believed that humanity needed to read the book of nature, to be in the natural world and to view the truth and wisdom that can be discovered there. I don't find a disconnect between being in the natural world and having the experiences of awe and wonder that are possible there."

While Emerson had his walks in the woods and Thoreau had Walden Pond, a lot of people in the Northwest head for the mountains to feel spiritual.

"I feel like I've come home in the outdoors," says Diane Moe. "I feel safe and feel this comfort you get in the wild. I feel connected so much to nature when I'm out there, in an Earth Mother sense. In the outdoors, I think, 'Yeah, I'm home, where I should be.' "

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