In my hand, a Taurus .38 feels like it weighs about the same as a small book; say, a slim volume like Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Also, like this volume, it confers upon its bearer, at least if she understands it, a certain power that cannot otherwise be attained without knowledge of the options available to a woman who wants autonomy, independence, and real freedom in a world that severely limits that possibility.

However, even though both the Taurus handgun and this early feminist volume share a similar heft, their power to liberate diverges in that one does so, rather obviously, through destruction, whereas the other does so through affirmation and creation. Those last two words mean a great deal to me because they define what I love most about the women I know. Neither those words, nor any others, have had the power to prevent the violent deaths of too many women.

A handgun, on the other hand, does have that possibility. The women I know talk about the risks they face from violent men. We have learned, primarily through the tragedies of others, to take precautions, and to teach our daughters, our nieces, our granddaughters, and our friends’ daughters to take those same precautions. We do what we know in order to maintain our safety.

However, as Esther Godfrey wrote in her article several issues back concerning violence against women, taking precautions is terribly limiting for women who seek both solace and freedom in the outdoors. Women who run, hike, bicycle, or backpack a trail alone carry with them all the necessities — water, food, first aid kits, wildflower books, and a deep seated and undeniable fear of aberrant behavior in men. Edward Abbey, the wilderness curmudgeon, admonished his readers that wilderness isn’t wilderness unless it contains something that can kill you and eat you, but I don’t think it was other humans he had in mind concerning the killing, (and if it was, then every desolate parking lot, every dimly lit street, every unexpected repairman constitutes a wilderness for women). There is both a dark comedy and a brutal poetic justice in the lifelong meat-eating human finding death at the teeth and claws of a larger and hairier carnivore. However, there is nothing but injustice in the fear that most women have to feel when in the woods by themselves.

My best friend mountain bikes alone in a large and beautiful area of single track trails, creek crossings, beautiful views and deep ravines made famous not by its beauty, but by the infamous murder of a young woman and lone runner — Karen Stiles. My friend carries with her all that I mentioned above, but along with those items, she also carries a cell phone and a handgun, the latter of which she is carefully trained to use. Her conclusions concerning handguns and statistics are that “Women and gay men should have to carry guns, and no one else should be allowed to.” By carrying a concealed weapon, she feels she is not only protecting her own life, but behaving responsibly in light of the fact that she has children and a husband with whom she wants to spend her life and still be able to enjoy the freedom of going solo into places she loves.

Another friend who bikes and runs alone bought a handgun after a woman she knew who worked for an outdoor adventure company was abducted from her summer home, then raped and tortured for days by a restaurant worker from the same company before she somehow found the strength to escape. Still another friend travels with a gun on the seat beside her when she goes on long trips in her car. Other friends, on the other hand, trust their instincts, their judgment, and their sheer good luck, and refuse to carry a handgun, equally horrified at the thought of using a gun against another human, or, if they hesitated, having it used against them.

And it is between these ranks that I now find myself. My Taurus is locked away high in a closet, away from my child or other children, but also away from the possibility of doing harm or good in my home or on a trail. But I think about it a lot, about what it means to own a gun, what it means to carry one.
I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I’ve been thinking about it since Karen Stiles was murdered while going for a run. I’ve been thinking about it since a childhood friend, one who attempted to live thoughtfully, deliberately, and conscientiously, was murdered in her Washington apartment by a man she knew who asked for “help.” I’ve been thinking about it since the two separate incidents in which men drove past me, and then passed me again, slowed down, stopped, and said things I didn’t want to hear as I ran on a remote country road.

I’ve been thinking about it since I backpacked on Noland’s Creek with a woman friend when I was in college, when four men on horseback came in after we did, took the site next to us, and then decided, later, to ruin any chance we had of sleeping that night. They didn't ruin our sleep by their noisy drunkenness, but by coming into our campsite after we were asleep, and then waking us by kneeling at our tiny tent “window” and scratching at the thin mesh, attempting to induce us to come out, to smoke a joint with them, to show them the Sierra Club membership cards they just knew we were carrying, to have a drink, to party. When we refused and told them to go away, one continued to kneel there, watching us, while the others picked up my journal I had left lying on a rock and proceeded to read it via the light of a flashlight, while I clenched my teeth, and my friend and I watched the other man watching us.

This story, unlike others I know, ended well, or at least better than we thought it would. The men did finally go away, and the next morning two of them came over and apologized, offering to take us horseback riding. I declined, still feeling angry and violated, but my friend went. The horsepackers left before us, and when we came out to my car, the only one in the parking lot, they had left another note of apology attached to a couple of hot cans of beer.

It has been all of this thinking that has led me to where I am now, and which, a couple of months ago, led me to look into a gun course which, in turn, could lead to a concealed carry permit. I went to the initial meeting, intended for people who wanted to familiarize or re-familiarize themselves with handguns before actually embarking on the course itself. The instructor was an intelligent and methodical man who knew statistics, guns, and human nature, and who conveyed his knowledge patiently and calmly. There were two women and two men there besides myself, with one of them being my husband, there to lend support and encouragement. One woman was there because she’d been caught in a traffic jam on an overpass in Asheville, had watched a man climb up the overpass railing, and had continued to watch as he tried to get into her car, hanging onto the passenger door even as traffic began to move slowly forward, even as she and two other women dialed 911 on their cell phones. He only left when he heard the approaching siren resulting from their calls.

As for me, I was there for all of the reasons I’ve mentioned, but I left the class with a terrible headache and nausea — not from the smell of gunpowder, which I rather like, nor from the roar of powerful handguns on a firing range. My headache and nausea were from my mental and emotional state. And it wasn’t because I couldn’t imagine myself shooting another human being, the kind I’ve written about here, the kind who resides mainly in nightmares, the kind who occasionally rears his head to create the statistics that foment fear and limit freedom through intimidation and terror. Instead, I felt sick because, in taking this step, I had brought home the reality of all the possibilities I feared — that someone might end my life in the woods when my senses are most alive, when I am engaged in something I love.

The initial lesson of this course only increased my fears rather than lessening them, and, thus far, this feeling has prevented me from taking any further steps in the direction of actually carrying a gun, in the woods or anywhere else. I continue to think about it, but even more, I think about all the worst possible scenarios — what if I were attacked on a trail by some horror of a human? Would I hesitate to pull the trigger, my own humanity at the fore, and have my own weapon used against me? Or would I, with trembling hands, react more viscerally and take the life of my attacker? Or would I react too soon, again, reacting out of an instinctive fear, and kill someone who meant me no harm?

The fact is, I don’t know, nor can I ever know until I have experienced that situation. I don’t even know if I would’ve shot the drunken men who read my journal by flashlight, or the one who watched us after the others moved away, all those years ago, though I know I was angry enough to want to hurt them. Or maybe I would’ve shot them before they had the wisdom to leave us there, unharmed, impotent, and furious in our tent. I don’t know, nor will I ever. What I do know is that I’d like to take more training in women’s self defense besides one day-long course and two evenings of target practice.

I’d also like to live in a world where none of this is necessary. But I don’t. So instead I think about the positive outcomes, about all the women who live alone, travel alone, bike alone, hike, camp, and boat alone, and who live strong and full lives, if not lives entirely free of fear. But then again, no sentient creature lives a life entirely free of fear, not even the men who prey on women.

At the conclusion of A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf, speaking of women and writing, says that “... we escape a little from the common sitting room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky, too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; ... for no human being should shut out the view....” Woolf was writing about women’s need for privacy and money in order to write, but her words suit my situation just as well. No one should be allowed to shut out another person’s view.

Woolf was inspired to write this book for a number of reasons, but the triggering factor was that she had been forbade the use of a college library because she was a woman. Though not quiet about her resentment, she made do with what was available to her, and she wrote works of genius before she finally committed suicide. Women today, if they follow the news and statistics, are psychologically forbidden the comfortable use of trails and wilderness areas, not by mundane evils like college beadles jealously guarding tradition, but by pathological predators, the college beadle’s more evil twin, who continue to enforce on women the age old constraints of violence and fear. A room of one’s own is what women still seek in many ways, but even more than that room and the view it promises, women who love the outdoors seek the landscape which creates the possibility of that view.

Like Woolf, like other resourceful people who are denied what they need, we make do. We make do through a constant mindfulness, through enjoying the woods with other women and men, through having a large dog accompany us into remote areas. But sometimes we find that isn’t enough. We throw off the constraints, go without others, and, again in Woolf’s words, “... we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to ....” For a growing number of women, however, a handgun is even better than an arm.

(Dawn Gilchrist-Young teaches English in the public school system and can be reached at youngericyoung@cs.com)

 

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