{"id":17979,"date":"2017-08-10T15:57:35","date_gmt":"2017-08-10T22:57:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/?p=17979"},"modified":"2018-11-11T22:10:01","modified_gmt":"2018-11-12T06:10:01","slug":"empowering-women-through-wilderness-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/camp\/empowering-women-through-wilderness-skills","title":{"rendered":"Empowering Women Through Wilderness Skills"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Sasha Cox lost her mother, she turned to nature and friends as a way to cope\u2014now she’s bringing the outdoors to a new group of friends through Trail Mavens retreats.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The campfire roars, the foil dinners steam, the whiskey makes a few rounds and there\u2019s not a man in sight\u2014only a group of women who call themselves Trail Mavens. As they banter with one another, some shed tears, some mention significant others, but they each talk with vulnerability about their intentions for the weekend as if they\u2019re longtime friends.<\/p>\n

Groups no larger than 10 ditch the distractions of urban living to unplug during weekend escapes organized by Sasha Cox, the San Francisco-based founder of outdoor skills retreats that empower women to be self-sufficient starting campfires, pitching tents, reading maps and hiking double-digit mileage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a depth of connection that you can create when you\u2019re talking about real stuff and nobody\u2019s distracted by a cell phone. There\u2019s no reason for any pretense and everybody shows up authentically as who they actually are in the world,\u201d says Cox. \u201cIt just means that everybody is really getting to know everybody else for who they are\u00a0instantly\u00a0without all the small talk and bullshit that usually comes at the beginning of a relationship.”<\/p>\n

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Sasha Cox | Photo: Kara Brodgesell<\/p><\/div>\n

Since the maiden voyage in April 2014, more than 550 women have gone on 80 backpacking, hiking and camping trips spanning California\u2019s forests,\u00a0shores\u00a0and deserts\u2014including locales\u00a0such as Yosemite<\/a>, Lake Tahoe<\/a>, Big Sur, Point Reyes, Death Valley<\/a> and Tomales Bay. Meals, tents, chairs, stoves, fuel, firewood and even sleeping bags, if needed, are provided.<\/p>\n

By early summer, trips through the start of August had already filled up and spilled over to waitlists, evidence of a demand Cox believes has been simmering for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s this community of women of all ages and types and stages, and you\u2019re out in the woods together,\u201d says Lisa Rowland, a college friend of Cox\u2019s who inspired the venture by being the first to come to her mind when the idea was born. \u201cI remember growing up and realizing Girl Scout camp was a place that I could burp loudly. And it was like, you could do things like talk about your poop with other girls. That was not a thing you did in school. That wasn\u2019t valued. Trail Mavens, it\u2019s like, let\u2019s just break this down because let\u2019s be honest, no one is pretty out here. We\u2019re all just pooping in the woods.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Trail Mavens at Tomales Bay | Photo: Kristina Frost<\/p><\/div>\n

It was in 2013 when Cox, grieving the loss of her mother who died of cancer, set out on a year-long backpacking trip in Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, Borneo, Indonesia, Peru, Columbia and ended in the U.S. to reset and move past life\u2019s heartaches. She quit her job as an event designer and facilitator, which required her to be peppy, and in her grief didn\u2019t feel she had the emotional bandwidth to start something new so quickly.<\/p>\n

Four months in, on the second morning of her\u00a0hike along the 35-mile El Choro Trek in Bolivia,\u00a0the sun rose from behind the Andes Mountains and Cox had three epiphanies.<\/p>\n

The first was that she hadn\u2019t cried in weeks. The second and third realizations came split seconds later.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized that I had never ever been camping or backpacking with my best girlfriends in San Francisco and my mind was blown,\u201d she says. \u201cI didn\u2019t understand how that was possible: that I had never combined this experience, which was clearly so healing for me and so empowering for me, with these women in my life who were also so healing and so empowering. What would it be like if I combined these women with this experience?<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then again, I realized that everything I had ever learned about the outdoors, I had learned from men. I had never had a female role model in the outdoors.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Photo: Kara Brodgesell<\/p><\/div>\n

The name Trail Mavens\u2014in Yiddish, maven means trusted expert in a particular field who seeks to pass knowledge to others\u2014was thought up a few days later and in the remaining months of her trek, Cox pitched the idea to people she met along her travels and continued to build its mission for her return.<\/p>\n

Cox\u2014raised as a city girl in the capitals of Tegucigalpa, Honduras and Washington D.C.\u2014says she didn\u2019t have her first empowering experience in nature until after graduating from Stanford\u00a0University when she was dating an outdoorsman. She said he generously shared and patiently taught what he knew about wilderness survival, but she later learned through launching Trail Mavens that not everyone is as lucky.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many women who have the experience of going outdoors, often with a male partner who doesn\u2019t necessarily create the space for the woman to step in, get her hands dirty, try starting the fire and yeah, probably mess it up the first time,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She says, in what she had heard from women, the woman has no room to learn for herself by working through frustration, trying something new and celebrating the eventual success.<\/p>\n

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Trail Mavens at Point Reyes | Photo:\u00a0Chelsea Dier<\/p><\/div>\n

At the start of every Trail Mavens trip, Cox says, the strangers and soon-to-be friends start with a conversation about what expertise they can offer and what they hope to master, as part of her cultivation of vulnerability and openness not always found in real life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen there isn\u2019t only one right answer, I think it\u2019s so much easier to mess around and get a little bit dirty trying new things,\u201d Cox says. \u201cIt\u2019s hard for failure to exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was as a Trail Maven in the Marin Headlands where self-proclaimed girly-girl Kelly Clifton lit a camp stove for the first time and discovered tips she didn\u2019t know she might one day need to know. \u201cLike, where\u2019s a good place to put a tent?\u201d<\/p>\n

Clifton says the moment she opted for a pair of clunky hiking boots over suede over-the-knee boots, she realized her priorities had shifted. She says she considers the trips\u00a0an investment in herself.<\/p>\n

Now, she has co-led the weekend escapes and added more gear to her closet\u2014her own sleeping bag, sleeping pad, Camelbak water pouch and solar-powered light\u2014than she\u2019s ever had. She was even emboldened to hike alone during her first solo trip in Joshua Tree in the spring of 2016, when she explored the Cholla Cactus Garden<\/a> and Skull Rock<\/a> and got turned around looking for the Lost Horse Mine<\/a> trail.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to get every woman I know to go on the trips because even if you\u2019re not outdoorsy, you get so much out of it,\u201d says Clifton. \u201cIt\u2019s really cool to be self-sufficient and make your own food\u2014that has its benefits, too. But there\u2019s just nothing like being with a group of really awesome women.\u201d<\/p>\n

Strong, funny, smart and courageous, she describes the women she\u2019s met. \u201cThey made a choice to take time for themselves in their busy schedules, obligations and \u2018should haves\u2019 and decided to spend the weekend outdoors.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Trail

Trail Mavens at Tomales Bay | Photo:\u00a0Kristina Frost<\/p><\/div>\n

For Claire Stein, a project manager for a Bay Area construction company who works long hours,\u00a0the appeal to Trail Mavens are the pre-planned trips and instant community.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talk about our intentions for the weekend and that immediately creates a certain amount of intimacy that doesn\u2019t really exist in real life,\u201d she said. \u201cIt gets very personal pretty quick because people are more open about why they\u2019re there. And it\u2019s often especially because we\u2019re in the Bay Area, they want to get away from their crazy, hectic weeks. This serves as an outlet for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The campfire sizzles as the women pour water on it. With bellies full of their charred dinners, warm from the shared whiskey, the Trail Mavens head to their tents to drift off to sleep under the stars, resting up for\u00a0another day of mastering the outdoors together.<\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Sasha Cox lost her mother, she turned to nature and friends as a way to cope\u2014now she’s bringing the outdoors to a new group of friends through Trail Mavens retreats. The campfire roars, the foil dinners steam, the whiskey makes a few rounds and there\u2019s not a man in sight\u2014only a group of women […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":18445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,387],"tags":[288,726,707,1378],"internal-tag":[1672,1678],"class_list":["post-17979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-camp","category-hike","tag-featured","tag-force-of-nature","tag-hiking","tag-trail-mavens","internal-tag-pre-redirect-camp","internal-tag-pre-redirect-hiking"],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","canonical_url":"https:\/\/rei.com\/blog\/camp\/empowering-women-through-wilderness-skills","smart_links":{"inbound":0,"outbound":0},"traffic_boost_suggestions_count":0,"meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"Empowering Women Through Wilderness Skills","url":"http:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/camp\/empowering-women-through-wilderness-skills","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/camp\/empowering-women-through-wilderness-skills"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/07\/Kara-Brodgesell-13-1.jpg?resize=150%2C150","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/07\/Kara-Brodgesell-13-1.jpg?fit=2000%2C1333"},"articleSection":"Camp","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Michelle Flandreau"}],"creator":["Michelle Flandreau"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Uncommon Path \u2013 An REI Co-op Publication","logo":""},"keywords":["featured","force of nature","hiking","trail mavens"],"dateCreated":"2017-08-10T22:57:35Z","datePublished":"2017-08-10T22:57:35Z","dateModified":"2018-11-12T06:10:01Z"},"rendered":"