Women Outward Bound

- Funding for this program has been made possible by the O'Shaughnessy Foundation and by... [tranquil piano music] - So I want you to take a piece of this.

- Oh, is that... - "1965 was a beginning.

2012 is another beginning."

- We can light your birch bark on fire, and we're gonna walk down and float it.

- The wall.

That's what I remember the most.

I was 17 years old.

I was a Jewish girl from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

I'd never spent much time in the woods, and here we were.

We had to climb that wall at the beginning of a four-week long survival school.

It was 1965.

Girls back then were not welcome in the man's world of the great outdoors.

Look at this ad.

It says, "Indoors, women are useful."

Most of us were not even allowed to play competitive sports in high school.

So I, along with 23 other girls from different places and social classes, set out to prove them wrong.

We were the first girls in the United States to be allowed to go to an Outward Bound school.

I didn't even own a pair of jeans.

Could we do what guys had been doing for so long?

[bright string music] [mellow acoustic music] - We're getting together a bunch of women from the first Womens Outward Bound in the Western Hemisphere back in 1965.

And we haven't seen each other-- many of us--for 47 years.

[all talking and laughing indistinctly] - Oh, my God!

Sweetheart!

- This is a trip.

- Oh, my God.

- Hello!

- Isn't this a trip?

- Hello!

- What is this, a bunch of old ladies?

[laughs] - We were all really excited-- very excited.

[all chattering indistinctly] It all began for me when I was 16 years old, after I heard a woman talking on the radio.

I was in high school and driving home.

I heard this woman was talking about something called "Outward Bound."

[brass fanfare] - Hello.

I'm going to accompany you on a visit to the Minnesota Outward Bound School, one of four in the United States-- all tax-exempt, non-profit summertime educational institutions.

- Like a lot of young girls back then, I had been to Girl Scout camp for two weeks.

Not crazy about that.

But the part I did like was being outdoors.

That's when I felt most like myself.

So when I got home, I told my mother about this program: Outward Bound.

I wanted to go to the first one just for girls.

It cost $350.

It was pricey, but we could afford it.

And Mom and Dad shared an adventurous spirit, so they both thought this sounded like fun.

My mother grew up loving the outdoors.

Her family spent summers at a lake cabin.

She was a natural athlete who played baseball and competitive tennis during a time when most women didn't play sports at all.

I grew up ice-skating at a neighborhood lake with my sister and neighbors.

Was I prepared for a month in the woods?

I was excited and nervous because, it turns out, I had signed up for a month-long course in strenuous wilderness living, including three days in the woods alone-- no food, no tent, nothing.

I soon discovered these will be some of the best and worst days of my life.

- The Minnesota Outward Bound School also has a summer program for girls, and only a few phases of the standard courses for boys are adjusted for the girls.

The girls' gains in poise and confidence and skill are very apparent.

– So here we are: one 23-year-old, one 20-year-old, a few 18-year-olds, but most of us, like me, 17.

- My dad said, "Oh, they're gonna have a course at Outward Bound."

And I said, "Oh, my God, yes!"

And then he said, "But it's gonna be in Minnesota," and I said...

"Minnesota?"

[all laughing] "Where is Minnesota?"

[all laughing] - Another girl from St. Louis has been urged to attend by a social worker.

And Hannah Blase, whose mother didn't understand what this was all about.

- My mom never learned to swim 'cause it wasn't safe.

[women chuckling] - That's true-- than actually sinking.

- And so she's like, "This is not optional.

You're not going."

And I went, "Well, who says?"

And then we just got into this thing and she said, "Well, you're gonna have to get there on your own."

Anyway, I got this job and I earned $300 in two months.

- [gasping] Wow.

- So then I sent my money in, and my application, and I forged my parents' okay.

[women laughing] - And Betty Kilanowski from Little Falls, Minnesota.

Her family was so poor that her mother couldn't even afford a hearing aid.

- They had scholarships available, so I wrote up... a request for a scholarship.

And I got accepted, so I was pretty excited.

- The rest of us were a mix of girls from Minnesota, the area, and, like Joan Thames, from Saint Paul.

She was from a large and rowdy Catholic family.

And her best friend, Eileen O'Shaughnessy.

- I was thinking about how I got interested in Outward Bound, trying to remember, and I think it was because a family friend, who was a year older than I-- a boy--had been.

And he was describing it, the whole experience.

And I just thought it sounded really, really fascinating-- something that I wanted to do.

There was no girls program at the time.

- And then there was me, the only Jewish girl in the group.

We were all different, but there was one thing we had in common: we were raised at a time when girls were supposed to be always ladylike.

We weren't supposed to get dirty or be tough.

We were supposed to strive to be, oh, Miss America and get married and have a family and serve men.

- Wonderful anniversary, dear, and thank you for the flowers.

- You're welcome, darling.

But if you could do one thing for me... - What?

- Try to do something about your coffee.

- I hoped it would be better today.

- In fact, when a proposal was made to create an Outward Bound program just for girls, the idea wasn't very popular.

- The idea that there was a kind of male, hair-shirt, hard, difficult kind of aura to Outward Bound and that that would be put up for grabs if women could do Outward Bound.

If girls could do Outward Bound, would boys really want to?

Because it--obviously it was awfully easy if girls could do it.

I mean, why would a boy want to do it?

- Well, here we were: a historic group of girls getting ready to do what men and boys had been doing for a long time.

[grand orchestral music] narrator: Outward Bound was set up not to change lives, but to save them.

In the dark days of 1941, we were losing hundreds of young merchant seamen in the North Atlantic.

Why?

Because they were inexperienced and lacked confidence.

They were simply not strong enough to survive in the water when those ships were torpedoed from under them.

Outward Bound was designed to give them that confidence.

It was done by facing them with a series of outdoor challenges that brought out the best in them.

It assured them, in other words, that they were better than they knew.

- I asked for permission to create a girls program, so I think that's why the men and the board, who saw more of the men... handling the program, thought why do I want women to be macho, and I didn't.

- Jean Replinger had led biking trips in Europe in the 1950s after World War II and thought it was important to teach girls the value and pleasure of being athletic long before that was popular.

- I wanted them to have that outdoor experience and know that you don't die if you're wet all night, or if you're into the muck up to your waist sometimes, you'll get clean again, and... you don't have to be liked by everybody to get something done.

[playful piano tune] - I remember our packing guide.

We would be given a sleeping bag, survival kit, a compass, and we had to pack items like, oh, a bandana, to put in our pocket, and other things you would expect, like a couple pair of wool socks.

But something I didn't quite understand was why we only needed one pair of underwear for the expedition.

So off we went with our duffel bags and suitcases on July 24th, a Saturday in 1965, meeting in Duluth, Minnesota for the two-hour bus ride to Ely.

I remember that the bus broke down along the way, but no one seemed to mind.

We were going on an adventure.

narrator: We are now at the school, deep in the Superior National Forest, near Ely, Minnesota.

Outward Bound students, ages 16 through 25, come from all parts of the United States.

From the big city, its apartments, suburbs and ghettos; from farms, small towns, public and private schools.

Really, from all walks of life.

- When we arrived at the Minnesota Outward Bound School, we found out that some media were there to follow us.

Joan Thames wrote about it in her first letter home.

"There's a lady here from 'Sports Illustrated' "and a man from the Minneapolis 'Star Tribune' and a freelance photographer."

They were all probably expecting to watch us fail, but I suppose they were mostly curious about why girls would want to get gritty.

There was also a reporter from "Seventeen" magazine there.

When he saw us, he was very surprised.

"Nothing I knew had prepared me "for the first shocking sight of them.

"I expected an assortment of muscle-molls, "a native version "of the Russian women's Olympic track team.

"Instead, I saw two dozen feminine young women, "several of whom, "as a northwoods guide would say, "wouldn't have weighed 100 pounds wringing wet-- which they were frequently destined to be."

When we arrived at Homeplace, the first thing we did was break off into two brigades.

My group of 12 was Waasamowin.

The other was Animikii.

Then we did something I'll never forget either.

It's called a "quiet walk."

narrator: Now they accompany the director on another kind of walk, an introduction to the nature of the north country and a few of its rigors.

The first day's cross-country trek is not intended to be easy.

Staff and students organize to assure safety and progress as they begin to get acquainted.

Some uncertainties begin to fade as new realities become apparent.

- We walked through muck, and then we went through the rapids and we had to hold on to each other.

And of course, we didn't know each other, so you immediately sort of started depending on whoever these girls were that were with you.

And you--we got back, and I think the last thing we did was go through the rapids.

So we were filthy and we lost our footing, and had to depend on each other.

And by then, we were starving and exhausted and sort of dependent upon one another right away.

- Joan wrote in her diary, "it's called a 'Quiet Walk' "because you're so busy wading through swamps that you don't have time to talk."

It's true.

We didn't know each other's names, but we were already learning to support each other-- one of the first lessons from Outward Bound.

- I thought I was gonna go ride horses, have art classes, paint our nails, talk, you know... had no idea.

The first day was just a shocker.

- Clearly, I was struggling my first day.

But not May Coors.

She was an outdoorsy tomboy from Colorado, so she fit right in.

She wrote in her diary, "Quiet walk was amazing.

"Running through swamp, river.

Cool berries.

"A lot of running at the end.

"A dip to cool off, then to bed.

Exhaust City!"

Yes, the first day was exhausting.

And this was just the beginning.

The next morning, as we were lying in our tents, we were oblivious to what was going on in the world.

1965 in America was a time of chaos.

The Vietnam War was escalating.

Beatlemania was rampant.

Martin Luther King was marching to Selma.

But in the northwoods of Minnesota, we were focused on preparing for our two-week expedition into the wilds.

Most of us could never imagine that we would also be changing history.

[stately string music] [bell clangs] We woke up in our tents promptly at 6:00 a.m. We were told to run a mile and then take a dip in the freezing cold Birch Lake before breakfast.

I definitely hesitated before taking that plunge, but eventually, I got in.

narrator: Each day, there is a run shortly after dawn, followed by a quick and brisk dip in the frequently mist-shrouded, cold water.

- Running that we did every morning-- I didn't love it.

But I incorporated it into my life for over 40 years.

Would get out and run every morning, no matter what the weather.

- After a quick, delicious breakfast, it was time to start training.

The focus was on building our physical strength to prepare us for 16 days of paddling our own canoes, carrying our own packs, and spending days alone in the woods near the Canadian border.

We went through the rigors of ropes course, We ran obstacle courses, balanced on logs, and did some serious rock climbing.

- Of course everybody had a little trepidation.

My hands are just sweating thinking about it.

- Believe me, this stuff was hard.

Never have I tested myself this way.

Girls usually just didn't do that kind of thing in 1965.

Sure, I biked and swam and I liked to walk around the lake, but this kind of training?

Almost like a boot camp, maybe, for boys.

Our role models were Jackie Kennedy, maybe.

Many of us had moms that just stayed at home looking beautiful and they cooked and cleaned for their families.

It wasn't that long ago that women were not even supposed to wear pants.

This school teacher dared to show up in court one year wearing slacks, and was put in jail.

And now look at us: a messy bunch of girls with no makeup, getting dirty and gritty.

- I was always taught... quote... "Girls don't do that.

"Girls don't do that.

That's just for boys.

"Camping is for boys.

"Canoeing is for boys.

"That's not something a girl does.

"A girl cooks.

"A girl cleans house.

"A girl does laundry.

A girl doesn't do any of the things like that."

Well, I found out different.

- For most of us, the most athletic thing we could do in high school was to be a cheerleader or play in a school club.

It was not required by law back then to have school sports teams for women.

And here we were being tested in ways I could never have imagined.

May Coors summed up the second day.

"Things are great, "but still no message from the wilderness!

"No sweat.

"Why force myself to believe?

I'm so damn materialistic-minded."

May was a Colorado girl who liked to hike and run in the mountains near Boulder with her friends.

Her brother had already gone on an Outward Bound course there, and now it was finally May's turn.

She was looking forward to pushing herself to the limit.

She even has a picture of her dad the moment he wrote the check for the school.

- I actually took a picture of him, um, signing the check for me to come to Outward Bound.

'Cause I was so excited.

I trained for months before Outward Bound.

I'd run to the swimming pool, I'd swim 50 laps, I'd run home, you know?

I'd get up in the morning, I'd go running, you know?

Right before we came we climbed Mount Princeton.

And we're going up Mount Princeton-- it's one of the hardest mountains to climb in Colorado.

It's really long.

But I knew I wanted that physical challenge, but I didn't want to fail, you know?

- I was thrown in with different classes of people that I never would've met otherwise.

I knew these people were different because they would talk about what they were gonna do after high school.

They were gonna go off and motor-scooter around Europe.

They were gonna go to a liberal arts college that was very... you know, like Antioch or Briar Cliff, or... not the University of Minnesota.

They would talk about their wealth.

So I knew that I was different.

- Everyone had their reason for being there.

May Coors was searching for a different kind of challenge than Joan, the city girl from Saint Paul, who complained in her diary that we "never have any free time."

But at least she didn't have to go on the 6:00 a.m. run that morning because, good Catholic girl that she was, she went to mass instead.

Joan's friend from Saint Paul, Eileen O'Shaughnessy, thought... - You know, it was interesting that there were so many different... personalities and feelings about the whole experience.

It was probably my first exposure to a variety of people, because in my education and growing up had been within, you know, a certain community, which was Catholic.

- Over the next few days, we started slowly getting to know each other while learning more skills: first aid instruction, compass reading, paddling skills.

All this was done at a dizzying rate.

Look at our schedule.

Every hour, another skill was learned.

We had an hour of creative time, which most of us used to write letters home or in our journals, which were given to us on the first day.

And there were initiative tests.

I remember one especially challenging, where we were blindfolded in a canoe.

And then there was the wall.

narrator: Here is a 13-foot wall, which further exercises the teamwork capacity of the brigades.

Effective use of brigade resources-- such as strength, quickness, planning skill, and length-- is mandatory.

[cheerful woodwind tune] - For me, the initiative test I loved the most was when we had to figure out-- and use our initiative as a group-- how to get everyone in our brigade over this 13-foot-high wall.

We could only use us-- no ropes or tools, just us.

Try to imagine how to do this.

- The wall was kind of difficult.

Being short, I mean, I didn't have an advantage-- except they'd always throw me over first, and then I'd have to help people after that.

They'd...I think they always would... they'd always tend to put the short people first, or the lighter-weight people-- throw 'em over first.

- It took us all 15 minutes.

This is the day, for me, when the 12 of us in my brigade learned to work together-- to truly trust and know each other.

There was Pam and Tina, Margaret, Betty, Joan, Polly, Jean, Sandy, Darcey, Patti, and Rosie.

And at the end, we got Rosie over last, 'cause she was the smallest.

Then suddenly we were ready for our shakedown-- our first time alone in the woods.

On our eighth day, we were put into pairs, given a few necessary supplies, including three matches, a knife, a hook and fishline, a first aid kit-- very small one-- a tin can, and a little bit of salt.

We were left by ourselves for a night and a day with our partner.

It was our first test to see if we could survive in the woods.

No tents, no real food.

Just us.

The first task was to build a shelter.

- There was this huge boulder and it had moss all over it.

I got the bright idea that we'd just roll the moss back and take it over and put it over the shelter we had started, and that would be our roof.

And how cool would that be?

You know, it's even green.

[laughing] You know.

So we rolled this thing and we carried it, like a piece of carpet, across, you know, and put it over there and everything.

And then she and I crawled in-- I'm sure it was with her.

She just forgot it.

And we sat there, and pretty soon it was like, dink...dink.

And the ants started falling off it.

[laughing] The bugs and the ants started falling down on us, and it's like... [imitates shrieking] [laughing] You know... so that didn't work.

We found enough just wood and stuff that we put up, kind of.

It was very haphazard.

We would not have stayed dry, I don't think.

But we felt safe.

All of a sudden, this huge noise-- crashing noise-- through the woods, and then this snorting and everything.

And we're like... [gasps] "Bear!"

You know, that was our first thought-- was that it was a bear, you know.

And then as it got closer, you know, it's like, "Oh, it's bigger than a bear.

What could it be?"

It's like..."Oh, it's a moose."

And we're like, "What do we do?

It might be rabid."

You know... [laughing] So unprepared.

So we had all this wood that we'd reuse for our shelter, so it's like, "We need to make a bigger fire."

[laughing] And so we started... putting our shelter.

So when Devvie said that our shelter caught on fire it's because we were trying to make the biggest fire we possibly could to make this thing stay away.

And it stood over there and it just kind of looked at us.

And he was huge.

He was a huge moose.

You know, and he just kind of snorted, and then he just slowly walked away.

And that was it.

- While Cathy and Devvie were trying to make the moose go away, Joan and Betty were in another location, searching for their food.

Remember, we didn't have any food unless we found it ourselves.

- I had a knife.

And I called it my Jim Bowie knife.

I got to take that with me and we found a gardener snake.

So I was running around-- and I remember it was really kind of rocky and licheny all around-- and I tried to hit it.

And finally, I was able to chop off its head.

And so we skinned it.

And then we found out it had a lot of babies in it, so we called it Mildred, because we figured it had to be a female.

And we used the baby snakes to try to fish... but we didn't catch anything.

I think the fish weren't fooled, um... but then we looked around and we found a jar, and we brought a lot of the baby snakes back in this-- it was sort of like a baby food jar or something.

And I skinned the snake and for a while, I had it on my hat.

- Joan and Betty boiled the snake.

They were thrilled with the idea of eating it until they bit into it.

Joan wrote in her diary that it "tasted like tough leather."

Joan was so proud of what they'd accomplished that she saved the snakeskin and the matches.

They were given three matches, but used only one.

In addition to Mildred the snake, Joan had also eaten two pairs of frogs' legs, and some berries, and the inside of a tree.

Cathy ate 12 ants in groups of four.

The shakedown tested us.

We had to use all the skills that we'd learned so far.

This proved to us that we were ready for our 16-day canoeing and camping expedition in the Quetico Superior wilderness near the Canadian border.

Three of those days, we would be completely alone-- not in pairs.

Alone in the woods with no phone, no food, no tent, no sleeping bag.

I didn't have a choice.

None of us had a choice.

We were leaving the next day.

narrator: The long expedition in the very rugged and remote and lonely wilderness exposes the prepared brigades to the penetrating forces and power of nature.

The tasks which nature imposes must be surmounted.

It is not easy to see things through when one is wet, dirty, cold, tired, and hungry.

Caution is frequently necessary.

One cannot proceed like the fabled bull in the china shop when nature takes a savage stand.

There are times to move ahead and there are times to wait and plan for the lulls nature always has up her sleeve.

Skilled wilderness adventurers have learned to adjust their actions to the moods and the rhythms of nature.

- Could we survive this route in the wilderness for 17 days, using our physical strengths, new skills, ability to work together, and self-reliance?

We were about to find out.

narrator: Now the girls are getting ready to jump off on their long wilderness expedition.

They are prepared and will face all kinds of weather and the cavalcade of challenges only nature and the human equation can cook up.

Their packs are only a little lighter than those the boys portage.

Rolling up a canoe alone to the portage is a knack, not a feat of strength, and most girls master the technique.

[peaceful piano music] - That morning, we took off early and paddled together as a group onto Moose Lake.

That's when the two brigades parted.

That first day was agonizing.

Joan remembers seeing me carrying two Duluth Packs, one on my back and the other on my front.

That would be about 100 pounds.

- Seeing you on this path-- and I think you had... you had double packs on.

And you were sitting there crying your eyes out.

- In fact, I remember crying a lot on the expedition, mostly out of sheer exhaustion.

At the end of, oh, many days, we all would strip off our clothes and swam in the nude.

We were far too hot, too sticky, and too tired to waste any energy being modest about swimming naked.

That's when I finally figured out why we were told on our packing list that we only needed one pair of underwear.

It's because we lived in our bathing suits most of the time.

Between days of constant rain and getting in and out of our canoes for portaging, we were usually wet or drying off.

Joan quickly summarized the first day in her diary.

"We all got sunburnt and it rained all night."

The second day, it rained again, all day.

[thunder rumbling, rain pattering] We took the Basswood Portage and paddled a total of 7 1/2 miles and then camped at Basswood Falls.

And it still rained.

It went on like this for days.

- It was my first time away from home, so that in itself was an adjustment.

The other thing was the whole thing about no makeup, no fancy clothes, no anything.

So you really were just stripped down bare.

And yet it was all okay, you know?

We all took care of each other, and I liked that.

[water lapping] - I realized that the lake and the forest was where I belonged, however.

I was at home in a canoe.

I was at one with myself for the first time in my life.

After a long day's paddle and portage, we would swim to get the grime off and then lay on a mass of sun-heated granite to warm up from the cold lake.

This was heaven.

For the next two weeks, when we weren't paddling up a lake, we were carrying packs and the canoes on our shoulders, or starting a fire with dried kindling we'd found at the base of pine trees.

- There was a portage that we were doing that was unusually difficult because it was just... it was all rocks and boulders.

And I had a Duluth Pack that was...quite full.

And I would struggle-- it'd be heavy, of course-- and take a step, and it would swing.

Take a step and it would swing the other way, and...I was pretty miserable.

I thought--you know, I just, like... [gritting teeth] "I really don't like this."

- I remember portaging.

I remember falling down in the mud with a canoe on my head, and Genie being on the other end, and me saying, "I'm not going "one step further.

I am done.

This is like torture."

And then... and of course, I did continue.

- It was hard, and I remember sometimes just enduring.

You know, you make a decision to do something and you do it, and sometimes, in the middle of it, you know, you fall down in the mud, and... you pick yourself up and, you know, shed a tear or not and-and press on.

- And the bugbites... the blisters... the rashes... being wet and cold most of the time...

paddling against the wind on a vast lake with all our strength, and each night, we fell into a rhythm of exhaustion and revival.

[crickets chirping] - But it was beautiful.

The moon was out.

You know, we were... you know, but we were exhausted.

Absolutely exhausted, 'cause we had canoed most of the day, portaged-- we had some real long portages.

And I just remember we were just exhausted, and we got the giggles.

- And then Lisa, who was one of our leaders, came skipping by, really, with a pack and a canoe on her shoulders, and she was singing.

And I just...looked at her, and I thought, "Oh.

"I don't have to feel miserable.

"It's not gonna be any easier to struggle with this pack, but the way I feel about it is under my control."

And it was just kind of one of these moments of enlightenment-- like, it just, like, came to me.

And after that, I was really able to do all the very difficult things that we did and not feel miserable.

[playful music] - And it was awful.

I'm not saying that the leeches weren't bad, or the mud bogs or anything, but the physical challenge wasn't there for me.

I wasn't pushed, physically, to the limit that I wanted to be.

You know, if there was an extra pack to portage, I'd run back for it.

Or a canoe, or-- I just wanted to do more and more and more.

And at some point right before solo, Lisa called me aside and sat me down, and she said, "I just wanna say that you're a very selfish person."

She said... [sighs] "We know you're strong.

You don't need to prove that to us."

[voice breaking] "What you need to learn "is how to be with other people and how to help them."

- For me, the most important lesson happened at the end of yet another rainy day.

I'd just had it one day.

I don't know if it was-- I think it was raining, and I was exhausted and I was hungry.

And I just stayed in my tent.

I used to get pissed at home a lot-- I just thought I had chosen to go here, I wanted to do this, and this was hard.

And I don't remember who brought it, but somebody brought me dinner.

[gentle music] It was really sweet, and I realized that this whole group that we were in, that some of us just... had moments.

And I was having my bad moment, and...somebody cared about me and reached out to me, and, I mean, she didn't say, "Oh, get out of there," you know?

"We all go through all this and we're all miserable."

She didn't say that.

She opened the-- unzipped the tent and handed me dinner.

[gentle music] And that was really sweet.

I don't remember who that person was, but that one act of kindness has never been forgotten and changed my life.

I learned what it means to be part of a team.

[water lapping] The next step on this journey was to learn how to be alone.

The climactic event of the expedition began on the 22nd day.

It's called "the solo."

Joan wrote that she was excited for the three days that she would be left alone without food, to live off the land and water.

- A solo is when you're dropped off for three days with, I think... what did we have?

Matches?

A...a safety pin, a can--a empty tin can, so you could boil water or whatever-- your journal, and a pencil.

- Oh, and four matches, a first aid kit, and some salt.

That's it.

One newspaper called these "implements of self-discovery."

Joan writes that on the morning of her solo, she had a sick-tasting meal of rice, spam, and Kool-Aid, and then was dropped off on an island where she built her shelter and fireplace and "found a few raspberries and made a snare."

The next morning, Joan was woken up by "a lovely alarm clock.

A squirrel ran over my stomach."

Then she "caught two frogs "and ate what there was of them, "went fishing with their insides, but didn't catch anything."

She said, "I ate four live minnows."

Joan, the city girl from Saint Paul, remembers that the minnows wiggled as they went down her throat.

Eileen O'Shaughnessy survived mostly on tea leaves she found on the ground.

Genie Waters scavenged for other food.

- I loved it.

It was just great.

I just remember being on the water and looking out over the lake.

It was just gorgeous and I loved it.

There were blueberries.

I ate sort of a broth of blueberries.

The solo was just... enlightening, because you just sat there, and we wrote in our journals.

Just seeing nature when you're thrown into it like that was wonderful.

- I remember sitting on my solo.

I don't think I even tried to eat.

I think maybe I tried to fish and abandoned that immediately.

The time just seemed to go fast, but yet, it was like slow motion.

It's like we started the solo... and then it was done.

It's like that sense of peace and, like, everything is right.

There's an order and a purpose.

- When it was all over, I gained muscle.

I was 122 pounds when I started and 133 pounds when we finished.

I also knew that my newfound survival skills made me comfortable in the wilderness.

Nature had a profound effect on me.

It's the place I am most myself, back then and even today, while traveling the world or in my own backyard.

Nature doesn't judge.

[waterfall rushing] [pensive piano music] After our solos, we realized "outdoors" is our good Earth and everything it provides through the power of nature.

It's a raging storm and a rainbow.

It's a pure, cold lake and enormous granite outcroppings.

Nature is sunrises and sunsets and wind on an enormous lake that you can't challenge in a canoe.

Nature is a buggy swamp at the end of a long portage and a friend you turn to to help lift that canoe... yet again.

Being in nature is the quiet of paddling through water for hours.

It's the orange of a fire at the end of a tiring day.

It's the vast universe we may chance to see above our heads each night.

[delicate orchestral music] [water lapping] So I wondered, "What happened to all these women?

Did Outward Bound School affect them as it did me?"

We shared weeks of a very intense time that changed some of our lives, but many of us never stayed in touch.

What became of them?

I contacted Jean Replinger, the director who originally asked permission to create our first girls group, and started tracking down the girls.

It wasn't easy, but after several years, we found 18 of the girls and four instructors.

And I invited them all to a reunion that would take us back to the wilds of Minnesota, where this journey began.

In the summer of 2012, we all met at my house in Minnesota.

Some of the instructors are gonna be here and ten of the women.

And we're just gonna sort of... see what happens, and then tomorrow morning, we get in... in a big van and get up to Homeplace and they have a... you know, we'll be paddling and maybe rappelling and swimming, if it's not too cold, and just being up there and sort of sharing what we've done the last few--many--years, and maybe what's ahead for the next few years.

[all talking happily] We greeted each other heartily, even though sometimes, we weren't even sure who was walking in the door.

You know, we all have gotten heavier or more wrinkled, and people who had dark hair are white now, and many people look really similar.

I always had sort of white hair, so that hasn't changed on me, but I certainly gained weight and changed.

I hope I remember people, like, when they walk in the door.

I didn't get name tags.

I didn't do that.

I just am excited to-- to talk to people.

- There's Genie.

- But as the night went on, we started to remember and share, and slowly, we became connected again.

You know, sort of, at the time, it didn't seem like a big deal.

We just were kids and we were in high school-- pretty much, most of us.

You know, we're all in our 60s and we're just excited to see each other and see what life has presented us, and how Outward Bound has affected us-- or if it affected us and how so.

- Well, this is really a dream come true.

I mean, it was in 1965 too, because when I asked to do this... "Why do you want--girls?

Why would girls wanna do this?"

[scoffing] Well, I said, "Why do men wanna do it?

"I mean... [stammers] "girls can like the out-of-doors too, "and they can benefit from it a lot.

Let me try.

Please let me try."

...that you could love the out-of-doors, get dirty, get wet... and still be very feminine.

- We came from many places with many backgrounds.

It was a really different time.

There was not a strong women's movement.

There was no Gloria Steinem and no "Ms." magazine.

There was no women's rights and there was no Title IX.

There was no Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to run the Boston Marathon-- even after several men tried to push her out of the race.

None of us made immediate changes.

Maybe we didn't think about them.

We just did what we all thought we wanted to do, and that was do something maybe sort of physically hard and challenge ourselves in nature.

[all chattering indistinctly] - I'm gonna actually put this up top.

- We left the next morning and we hit the road to the Boundary Waters, a trek we hadn't made as a group for 47 years.

- Bye, everyone!

- Good-bye!

- Bye!

[uplifting string music] - After driving down the familiar gravel road, we were greeted by the new generation of Outward Bound instructors.

- Hi, Cathy.

I'm Liz.

- Hi, Liz.

Nice to meet you.

Oh, they're all so, so cute!

They're just like we were.

- Hi.

Mary.

- Hi, Mary.

- Mariah.

- Mariah, nice to meet you.

- What's your name?

- May.

- You guys look so young.

- Have you worked here a long time?

- My fourth year.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

- Wow.

- We, the Outward Bound women of 1965, meeting the Outward Bound women of today.

We bonded instantly.

These women were definitely more confident than we were back then.

It's strange to think we opened the doors for them, and now they're helping us.

- [laughing] - We have to wear life jackets?

- You have to wear life jackets.

Either that, or we take you out on the boat and dump you.

- There we go.

- I mean, all Sally had to do was say, "Hey, do you wanna work the women's reunion-- the first womens course that was ever here?"

"Of course I would!"

As a female doing things that people think are typically male things-- being strong and...you know.

Um...to be... to be in touch with women that started that legacy when they said, "Oh, you can't have girls courses.

You can't have all girls up here."

Like, "that's crazy."

And then to just be around that, and to listen to you all and what your experience was like, and be around you for that weekend was...was awesome.

[acoustic guitar melody] - And then, like no time had passed, we were back in the water, back with our paddles, back with our friends.

Somehow, intuitively, most of us knew what to do.

- I realized that I couldn't remember exactly how to paddle, so I had to copy everyone.

You know, like how, and where to put my hand.

But then it kind of came back naturally.

At one point, we got really into the flow of it, and we weren't talking and everything, and everything was going really great, and I thought, "This is kind of..." I remembered the hours and hours of canoeing that we used to do that, every once in a while, we'd go, like, for an hour without talking.

- I think it's better on this side.

- Well... - After a delicious dinner... - [laughing] - And more memories shared, we climbed into our bunks and fell asleep.

But this time, the 6:00 a.m. run would be optional.

[birds calling] [calming acoustic music] [all screaming happily] - Whoo!

- The next morning, some of us did jump into the icy cold lake.

[laughing] Not me.

I didn't like it back then, and I certainly wouldn't do it today.

Of course, those who did jump wore bathing suits this time.

Later, we got a tour of the grounds.

Some things are really different, like the ropes course.

It's much, much higher off the ground than when we did it.

- To get off the course, you can either climb down one of these poles, or we have the zip line over here.

- [laughs] - They can zip down.

and then climb down a ladder.

- Ooh-whee.

- Oh, here--look at this one up here.

- Oh!

- It's like skis.

- Yeah, the swinging skis.

[all talking indistinctly] - Some of us even went rappelling.

- [laughs] - You're doing great.

- Okay!

Promise.

- Whoo-hoo.

- We can't see you anymore.

That must mean you're down.

- I'm down.

- Okay.

[all cheering] - Belay's off.

[playful piano music] - It makes me feel like I'm weightless.

- Yeah.

- It's nice that they're doing this for us and letting us do this.

- Nice.

- I don't even think we had helmets.

We didn't have all these safety features, so...we all survived it and did well and had fun.

- Whoa, mama.

- Nice and slow.

- I think once I could feel that my body was kind of like, "Oh, yeah," and I could feel that it was really secure, I was fine.

- While challenging ourselves in the woods, on the rocks, in the water, and sitting around the campfire, something magical happened.

We shared memories.

And then bits and pieces of our personal lives today emerged.

Patti talked about becoming a doctor, even though she was told by a surgeon that women don't belong in medical school.

She pushed through barriers to become one.

Today, she takes a month each year to volunteer her skills in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and recently worked with refugees in Lebanon.

- Something within us that maybe became alive in 1965-- that, even though we may not have recognized it formed who we became.

That--it was just so... so much a part of us-- that whether we acknowledged it or not, it's just a part of us.

- Joan, who caught Mildred the snake on her shakedown, became an elementary school teacher and adopted three children, one with special needs.

Several of us were strongly influenced by the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment, known as the E.R.A., which was designed to guarantee equal rights for women under the law.

And even though the Equal Rights Amendment was never ratified, that effort mobilized an entire generation of women to fight for change, including Betty Kilanowski.

Betty, the blue collar kid from a small town in Minnesota, worked in the Minnesota iron mines, became a union welder, marched for the E.R.A.

in Washington, D.C., and now holds a master's degree in geology.

She tests water quality in Washington State.

- It did a couple of things for me.

One is that it opened up the possibility that I could start thinking about going to college, 'cause I met other young women who were going to college.

They talked about it.

I thought, "I can do this.

"I can figure out how to do this, "even though it's gonna be really hard and I'm not gonna get any help from my folks."

Outward Bound was my first watershed event.

My second watershed event was when I went to work in the mines.

In the late 1970s, women were starting to get jobs in industry again.

They had jobs in industry during World War II, and they had worked in the taconite mines in northern Minnesota in World War II.

- She was as proud as a girl could be There's something true about Red, white and blue about Rosie... - [rolling tongue] - The Riveter - And I got to work side-by-side with men, doing physical labor, and I've always believed that I can work as hard and do the same thing as any man my size.

- Many of the girls, like Joan, Betty, Genie, and May, went back to Outward Bound to become instructors soon after the course.

- What I would say I took away from that is living in the moment.

Just the peacefulness of it.

There's very few things that teach you that, or that you have time to think about that.

Because even at a young age, I think I was very, very programmed to keep accomplishing and doing and scheduling and...pushing myself.

And in Outward Bound you push yourself, but then there's that... there's just so much serenity.

[birds chirping] And you get to that point where... everything is peaceful with the group.

And you kind of know your role and you do it, and you have the sunrises and the beautiful sunny days, and the wind and the bugs and the bad parts, but...but it's still-- living in...

I really do think living in the moment is... it was my most valuable feeling that I took away from Outward Bound.

- May, who eventually received a bipolar diagnosis, has a beautiful family and continues to follow her passion for sport.

- I've made a lot of progress in the last couple of months.

And I'm aware now that my happiness is completely in my control.

[sniffs] And it's just the first time in 63 years I've been aware of that... [chuckles] Instead of feeling like a victim and being angry, which was a way to keep me...unhappy and at arm's distance from people and stuff.

[sniffs] It's been a journey and the bipolar thing has been a huge handicap.

But I'm here and I'm alive.

And I'm still trying.

- Yay.

- That's it.

- Got up to... - Jani took her abusive husband to court for domestic violence.

And me?

I work in the film industry, and even though I didn't realize it at the time, broke barriers for women, just like my mother did for her generation.

Our children also felt the impact of what we did.

- [laughing] You go ahead.

- My daughter inherited my love for nature and is now a veterinarian.

- Oh--oh, that won't work.

- Well, then... - On our last morning, most of us went out for one last paddle.

We just couldn't stay away.

We all got up too early to go paddling, 'cause we're leaving this morning.

And I said, "Well, is anybody going?"

And they liked at me like, "A-are you kidding?

Yeah, we're going paddling for sure."

So almost everybody's here, even though they went to bed sort of late last night.

And it's gorgeous out and... and the staff is just flipping up canoes and... like they're nothing and putting them in the water.

And we used to do that, but we don't do that anymore.

So they're doing that for us.

Yeah.

It's pretty nice.

[peaceful music] - "It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.

"I wanna know what you ache for.

"It doesn't interest me how old you are.

"I wanna know if you will risk "looking like a fool for love, "for your dreams, "for the adventure of being alive.

"I wanna know if you can sit with pain-- "mine or your own-- without moving to hide it, "or fade it, or fix it.

"I want to know if you can be with joy-- "mine or your own.

"If you can dance with wildness "and let the ecstasy fill "to the tips of your fingers and toes "without cautioning us to be careful, "be realistic, "to remember the limitations of being human.

"I wanna know if you can see beauty, "even when it is not pretty, every day, "and if you can source your own life "from its presence.

"I wanna know if you can live with failure-- "yours and mine-- "and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the moon, 'Yes.'"

[uplifting music] "I wanna know if you can be alone with yourself "and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments."

- In a few hours, we would be going back to our lives in Minnesota, Colorado, and South Dakota.

- We're the trees.

- [laughs] We're the trees.

- When it was time to say goodbye, we realized that we were all very different, but there was one thing we had all in common: we shared an experience that taught us essential life lessons.

Life is not easy, but you can handle what comes your way.

You are strong.

You can get through whatever challenges life throws at you-- sometimes with a little help.

You can do anything you want to do if you take time to figure out how to do it.

We were 24 girls who arrived at Outward Bound School as teenagers not knowing what to expect, and by the time we left, we had found grit and grown up.

And we had also found friends that would stand the test of time.

For more information about "Women Outward Bound," please visit our website, womenoutwardbound.com.

Also find us on Facebook and Twitter, #womenoutwardbound.

Funding for this program has been made possible by: And by: