Go to work. Take care of the kids. Do errands. Tend to spouses and other family members. Cook. Clean. Pay the bills.

Repeat!

Caught in a cycle of everyday responsibilities, many women today don’t have the chance or take the time to recharge and renew themselves. They can get stuck in a rut, their heads down and shoulders bowed as they take care of everyone and everything else. Yet by stretching themselves physically and mentally in the great outdoors, and by pushing some boundaries, they can find new strength as mothers, wives, sisters, coworkers and friends.

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Fresh air, open space, and reconnecting with nature in a visceral sense are all necessary for good health and lifelong well-being. And it’s why some women, like Nicole Gammino of Fairfield, Connecticut, a 30-something mother of three young children, broke from routine recently to go on a fall weekend adventure to a dude ranch in Saratoga, Wyoming, called The Spa and Lodge at Brush Creek Ranch.

Over the course of several days, Gammino, along with her group, practiced rifle shooting and went hunting for pheasant. She went trout fishing, the cool water rushing past her under the broad Wyoming sky. She learned how to catch, wash and gut a fish with her bare hands. She went hiking. She breathed deeply. She ate well and slept well.

And during what she called the “really cool weekend,” as led by outdoorswoman Georgia Pellegrini in partnership with Orvis Adventures and Brush Creek Ranch, Gammino regained a sense of self and a sense of perspective.

“I found it fully refreshing. It made me realize I need to do more of this,” said Gammino, who had never done anything like this before. “You get caught up in being a mom. But you become a better mom as a result of this experience.”

Carol Turpin of Tampa, Florida, a generation older, found herself strengthened, too, but in different ways. Turpin lost her husband two years ago and spent much of that time in mourning. It was a struggle for her to work her way through her emotions, to handle all the paperwork involved with her husband’s passing, and to transition back to daily life without feeling she was leaving her husband’s memory “behind.”

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Turpin said she finally reached the point where she felt “a time of mourning had moved to a time of dancing.”

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She traveled on the adventure weekend with her daughter, wanting to celebrate both their fall birthdays on the trip. “We decided to do it together,” Turpin told LifeZette. “I definitely stepped out of my comfort zone to do this.” She found it liberating. “Now I feel like I’ll do a lot more adventuring and exploring.”

Turpin shot seven different weapons over the weekend. “I was in trout fishing mode, too, with waders that were mostly uncomfortable, but they did what they were supposed to do,” she said with a laugh. “It was wonderful.”

Spanning 30,000 acres of Rocky Mountain west, The Lodge and Spa at Brush Creek Ranch in Saratoga, Wyoming, offers rugged adventure.
Spanning 30,000 acres of Rocky Mountain west, The Lodge and Spa at Brush Creek Ranch in Saratoga, Wyoming, offers rugged adventure.

Debra Halpert, a participant from East Quoque, New York, had her own perspective as well. “New experiences to me are the most stimulating. So we’ll go back home with a different perspective and an open mind,” she said, adding, “The most important thing we can do is take care of ourselves.”

Guided by an Expert
Pellegrini, 34, an outdoor adventure expert, chef and author (pictured at the top of this article), has been organizing back-to-the-land trips for five years, tapping into the instincts, she said, of her grandmother’s generation.

“It’s about learning to dig, weed, burn — to get a little dirt under your fingernails. I think that’s the most visceral and inspiring way to live. My goal is to teach women to get back in touch with their roots, to roll up their sleeves and learn from each other. We live in such a fast-paced world. I’m always looking for the antidotes to that technology-driven world,” she added.

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Pellegrini hosts three or four adventure weekends a year in locations all over the country, from Montana to Virginia. She began the weekends for women but is now expanding her program to include coed adventures.

Two explorers, one from Austin, Texas, and another from Moraga, California, pose with their kill.
Two explorers, one from Austin, Texas, and another from Moraga, California, pose with their kill.

“Modern pioneering is about finding ways to get back to the land, even in small ways like using a patio planter or growing potatoes in a bag on your fire escape,” she told LifeZette. “It’s about looking for things that are real and lasting, versus the fake and manufactured. I use my hands constantly and I enjoy teaching others to do the same. The vast majority of women I work with have never shot a gun, for example, but they’re willing to try something new, to be out here and live with abandon and not self-edit.”

A native of upstate New York, Pellegrini grew up “on the same land my great-grandfather lived on, fishing for trout, eating it for breakfast, and living off the land,” she said. Her grandmother and mother were all fearless, she said. Their examples guide her work.

“Catching my first fish was incredible. I felt my whole stance change,” said Jackson.

Olivia Jackson of Menlo Park, California, took several days off to take part in the Wyoming weekend. Her takeaway thought: “I can’t believe I caught my first fish! It was incredible and I felt my whole stance change, from someone in an almost a meditative state watching the fly float down the stream, to the moment I hooked that fish and really felt like a girl hunter.”

Jackson’s life advice for others who might consider this? “Our tendency is often to fence ourselves in. Instead, take that chance to grab every opportunity and seize what life throws at you and say, ‘Yes, I’ll try this.'”

That’s what leads to real growth, suggests Pellegrini, which participants then take back to their everyday lives.

“Living off the land is what I call manual literacy,” she said. “Whether it’s going into the fields of Wyoming and hunting birds, or going horseback riding in the mountains, or simply incorporating nature into their daily lives in small ways, women can be a little fearless. That’s the way to live life fully. Some women get this Amazonian look in their eyes during their adventures, and once they have that experience, there’s no turning back.”

And as the video below clearly demonstrates, those experiences can extend to something as basic and important in today’s world as the skills of self protection and self defense.

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