After all, the Beretta 391 Xtrema2 shotgun was particularly heavy on my spaghetti arms the morning after paddling four miles in a kayak. My forehead was still a little sore from where I accidentally cracked it on the top bunk bed. And it was hot outside. Very hot.

But after the gun butt recoiled into my right shoulder -- leaving a budding bruise in honor of my first shot, ever -- a different word burst from my lips: "Oh!" As in, "Oh, wow."

Which pretty much describes my entire experience last weekend at the "Becoming an Outdoors-Woman" workshop at the Eastern 4-H Environmental Education Conference Center.

"The purpose of this is really to give women a chance to learn in a relaxed atmosphere ... away from husbands and boyfriends and fathers, who maybe aren't as patient,'' said North Carolina BOW Coordinator BB Gillen. "Some of the women here may have a lot of experience in the outdoors, some may have very little."

The latter being me.

Let's be honest: I was a little skeptical when a certain male outdoors editor approached me about embracing my inner hunter-gatherer for a weekend.

I'd never sat in a double kayak, much less executed a 26-point turn. Had never handled a gun, much less powdered a dozen clay pigeon targets. And couldn't bake a whole two-pound chicken in my oven at home -- much less under a coffee can, on the ground, with only tin foil, Crisco and coals.

Who knew?

Many of the other 58 women at camp didn't, either. Which was the point.

"Camping, outdoors survival skills ... have really become a lost art, I think,'' said 55-year-old Lois Poole, who has been volunteering to teach women how to cook over hot coals and in foil-lined cardboard boxes for all 10 summers of the workshop. "When people go outside these days, they have it easy -- with big air-conditioned campers, TVs, video games. We need to make sure those skills aren't lost."

The three-day, bug-spray-mandatory seminar worked like this: For $185, campers selected four 3 1/2-hour courses in which to participate.

The most popular were digital photography, kayaking and outdoor cooking, but the two-dozen-plus other options -- which are tweaked year-to-year -- included everything from fly fishing to basic camping to birdwatching to search-and-rescue to geocaching to rifle markswomanship.

Women ages 18 to 88 from all over North Carolina participated last weekend. About a third had attended at various locations before, and many newbies said they would follow suit.

"We'll definitely be back,'' said Chapel Hill's Donna Long, 66, who attended classes with her mom, Chavela Hernandez, 88. "There's just so much more to do."

Why come in the first place?

"Fun,'' said Hernandez, who had fished, packed for the outdoors, shot a bow and arrow and used a compass before -- but wanted a refresher course, considering she is eight decades removed from her Girl Scouts days.

Meals and (air-conditioned) rooms were also included in the tuition, and although repeat campers often choose to room together, Gillen tries to group solo gals with others of similar ages or interests.

I bonded with my roomies, attorneys Paige Rouse of Goldsboro and Joanna Carey of Chapel Hill, over the need for ibuprofen and the exhaustion-induced silliness of playing "Go Fish" with fish-faced playing cards that were part of our welcome bag.

"Do you have any Walleye?"

"Go fish."

Just another memory from what one student dubbed "Big Girls Camp."

Paige and Joanna participated in a range of courses, including a wilderness survival class that taught them how to make fire, how to pack a handy survival kit and how to make a small shelter from branches and leaves.

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