In Maine, as in the rest of the country, more and more women are getting serious about the great outdoors and becoming outdoorswomen. This is for the most part a good thing, an inevitable offshoot of our cultural revolution and the modern woman’s quest for personal independence. Historically, Maine had its Annie Oakleys long before women were fighting for the right to vote. In the days before suffrage, there weren’t many Maine women who could “rope, ride and shoot,” – or cast a long fly line – but the ones who could were good at it, and are part of Maine’s outdoor folk lore.

Fast forward.

Today, there is for those women who want to learn to hunt and fish a formal program: BOW (Becoming an Outdoors Woman). This a wonderful program offered and sanctioned by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIF&W). Thanks to BOW, dozens of women have been able to acquire outdoor knowledge and skills from patient professionals rather than from a significant intimate whose strong suit might not be sharing his outdoor savvy with the woman of his dreams.

Maine has a term for this outdoor learning process. It’s called “bringing somebody along.” From the time I was old enough to walk in the woods, I was “brought along” by my Dad, as is the case with my sons and so many other Maine outdoorsmen. The classroom was always there wherever we hunted, fished or camped. And we learned – not only how to catch and clean a fish, or to hunt and care for wild meat – but literally hundreds of other less obvious or mundane outdoor skills that became second nature. For example, how to find dry firewood in the driving rain, how a choke works on an outboard motor, or how to flare a copper pipe for a gas light hookup.

Diane, my wife, grew up with an outdoorsman father. While she had great times at camp, and learned to drive her Dad’s old Army jeep on back roads, she was never “brought along” in the ways of the outdoors. Later in life, with children grown and a teaching career behind her, my lifelong passion for hunting and fishing beckoned her. She enrolled in a number of BOW program offerings, and came away with good basic knowledge of fly fishing, outdoor cooking, canoeing, gun safety and marksmanship.

In 10 years, she has learned a lot by doing. It has been a bittersweet experience to watch her surpass me as a fly fisher and a marksmen, but I have learned to adjust.

Last week, though, she and I came face to face with a gaping void in her repertoire of outdoor skills. A thorough woman who is intense about always being prepared, she asked me for some basic instruction before striking out on an all-women trip to Montana with my sister in our pickup and tent camper. “Gee, Diane,” I said, rolling my eyes, “It’s not exactly rocket science, just follow the signs to Bozeman. What do you want to know?”

“Well, you know, Hon,” she said, “I ought to know how to do the stuff you normally do, like how to change a tire on the truck, how to put up the camper, turn on the propane, that sort of stuff.”

We went at it, and did she ever get checked out. What I thought would be a half hour briefing turned into a protracted three-day tutorial on tires, tire pressures, tire gauges, socket wrenches, fuse boxes, fuse replacement, trailer hitches, ball sizes, tongue weights, propane tanks, two stage regulators, left-hand threads, 12 volt deep-cycle Marine batteries, AC-DC conversion, properties of graphite as a dry lubricant, and so forth.

She seemed pleased and confident when her instruction was concluded. “Good,” she said “I think that I am ready.”

“It would have been easier to prepare you for a moonshot,” I said.

As it turned out, much of what Diane didn’t know were things that most experienced, “brought along” outdoorsman just soak up along the way. While Diane learned a lot at her three different Becoming an Outdoors Woman sessions, she missed out on some basics, as enumerated above.

The BOW planners deserve a lot of credit just the same. They have worked diligently at providing students a well-rounded curriculum. They even have a new program called “Beyond BOW,” which is a kind of an advanced degree program. Still, nothing is being offered on socket wrenches or left hand threads.

At no small risk, might I propose this: A new course offering for perhaps the basic BOW program that encompasses so many of these not-so-obvious, mundane skills that an accomplished outdoorswoman must master if she is going to become truly capable and independent in the outdoors. This course, however compressed, would be kind of a preparatory schooling for those aspiring outdoorswomen who were never “brought along,” so to speak.

By the way, my wife the outdoorswoman reported in by cell phone last night. She was passing through the South Dakota Badlands. Rapid City was just ahead. The rig was humming nicely. She said there had been no need to rely on any of her newly acquired skills, but that it felt “good to be ready just in case.”

V. Paul Reynolds is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide, co-host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network (WVOM-FM 103.9, WCME-FM 96.7) and former information officer for the Maine Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. His e-mail address is [email protected].