Marilyn Stone:
Bringing The Outdoors To Women

by Carolee Boyles-Sprenkel

For most of her working life, Marilyn Stone was content with her job as a mental-health professional. But at the age of 41, a case of job burnout hit her. She walked away from a secure career and founded Wilderness Women, an information service dedicated to providing women with learning experiences about guns and shooting, and other aspects of the outdoor sports.

"After twelve years, I got burned out and just quit," she says. "Plus, I have a disability with my knee. We were getting short-staffed enough where I would have had to supervise people on the floor, and walk all day on a cement floor. The more I stress my knee, the greater the chance I'll have to have it replaced. It would interfere with me being able to hunt, and I simply won't allow anything to do that. So I quit my job."

But her discontent ran deeper than just job burnout. She kept thinking about her age, and lost chances, and what she wants to do for the rest of her life.

"My dad died several years ago, a few months before he was 60," she says. "Everything was 'When I retire.' And I find as I get older I keep thinking that I'd better do it now, because there might not be a retirement."

Besides, it was the start of hunting season. When she walked away from her job at the Ft. Logan Mental Health Center in Denver in the fall of 1994, Marilyn really wasn't worried about what she would do for the next few months: she went hunting. But while hunting may put meat on the table, it doesn't pay the bills unless you're a guide or an outfitter, and Marilyn is neither; she had to come up with some way of making her interest in shooting and the outdoors pay, or go back to working with the chronically mentally ill.

Unlike a lot of little girls, Marilyn grew up very comfortable with guns. One cabinet in the kitchen of the Oregon farmhouse where her family lived was designated the "gun closet"; there, a couple of .22 rifles always were available for her and her three older brothers to shoot. When she was in second grade she asked for a BB gun for her birthday, and received it. She says that even then, she consciously planned each shot so it was safe and didn't endanger people or farm animals with a ricochet.

"One of my brothers was seven years older, and he was very firm about 'These are the safety rules and you do not break them,'" she says. "But I didn't start hunting until I was 28, because my dad never took me. I think that's really sad, because it could have been a wonderful father-daughter time. I don't think it ever occurred to him, and it certainly never occurred to me."

As a young adult, Marilyn shot competitively for a time, while she lived in Laramie, Wyoming. "But I'm not real interested in competition sorts of things," she says. "I get nervous and then I can't hit anything."

After four months out of work, Marilyn began looking for new career avenues. At the same time a series of little events in her life became the genesis of an idea. A woman she had worked with wanted to learn how to fish, and wasn't getting adequate help by going to sporting goods stores and asking.

"She said I should start teaching women skills like those, but I wasn't ready to hear that yet," Marilyn says. "I thought about doing outdoor adventures for women only."

She pursued that for a while, and found out that the liability is very high; she decided that wasn't the way she wanted to go. She thought about doing a magazine, and decided was a lot bigger project than she wanted to undertake.

Then someone she met suggested she start doing seminars for women. Marilyn was ready to listen to it. She came up with a list of classes and seminars she thought women would want to attend, designed some flyers, and started rounding up instructors and participants.

Gradually, information about Marilyn's programs began appearing in the Denver Post and other local media. Then she started writing a column for the newsletter of the Colorado chapter of Women for Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife. She's spoken to such groups as Formerly Employed Mothers At Loose Ends, and taught some basic bait-fishing classes for school groups.

Among the seminars she offers are target shooting, wilderness survival, orienteering and four-wheel-drive techniques. She's also planning some self-defense firearms classes, and she's networking with the Becoming an Outdoors Woman program.

As any new venture will, Wilderness Women is struggling with some growing pains. But fortunately for a lot of women who are interested in shooting and the outdoors, Marilyn is committed to making Wilderness Women work.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," she says. "If you'd told me two years ago, I would have thought you were crazy. But I feel like this is what I'm supposed to do."

For more information about Wilderness Women, contact Marilyn Stone at P. O. Box 19777, Denver, CO 80219, or call 303-922-7700. Or e-mail her at voodoo777@aol.com


Copyright (c) 1997 Carolee Boyles-Sprenkel. All rights reserved.

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