Remembering the Wild Thread of Women in a Survival Retreat
By Alana Livingston
Cover photo courtesy of Alana Livingston
I arrived at Prater Mountain Ranch with a tent, a notebook and the vague expectation that I would learn how to survive in the woods. Knife skills. Fire. Shelter. Useful things. What I didn’t expect was to remember something far older—something feral and communal. Something deeply human.
I didn’t know it then, but I arrived armored. Capable, yes—but guarded and more disconnected from my own wildness than I cared to admit.
The Survival Sisterhood Retreat, a women-only gathering hosted by Sacred Cedars Wilderness School near Sandpoint, drew women ranging from 17 to 80 years old. We came curious and cautious, most of us unsure what we were walking into. By the first evening, that tight knot of uncertainty had started to ease. It didn’t feel like a class anymore—more like something we were remembering together. In the weeks following the retreat, many of us found our way back to one another, still searching for the language to explain our experience but certain of this: none of us left unchanged.
Camp took shape along a creek beneath towering pines. I pitched my tent close to the water, thinking it would calm me, not yet realizing how much listening that choice would require. An old bell rang for meals, its sound carrying through the trees. Smoke rose and drifted as we gathered. One afternoon, it was moose quesadillas—hot, messy and handed around without ceremony.
At night, we sang by firelight, burned sage and let our voices move freely into the dark. I felt a little awkward letting go at first, but gradually it came. Mornings began quietly, with sit spots—time to listen before thinking took over. In that half-dreaming state, breath slowed, senses sharpened and the land stopped being scenery. It became a participant.
In the quiet moments, I found myself reading “Women Who Run With the Wolves” by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. It felt less like a book I had chosen and more like one that had chosen me. Only after days of fire, song and shared labor did I understand why it had found its way into my pack.
The skills were real and rigorous. Expert instructors guided us through knots that turned paracord into shelter and security. We built debris huts and lean-tos, weighing time, energy and resources. We learned signaling and rescue—how panic kills faster than weather and how breath and stillness save lives. Predator awareness covered both wilderness encounters and human threats, naming truths many women already carry in their bones.
Archery demanded presence. The bow doesn’t negotiate with ego. By the end, a bruise had bloomed across my forearm—proof that my body had learned before my mind caught up.
As part of the retreat, women’s natural health classes reframed the body as a landscape rather than a problem. Maiden, mother, crone—thresholds not of decline but of power. Anthropology taught me early that across time and culture, especially in Indigenous and land-based societies, survival was never just about staying alive.
But the most powerful moments lived between the lessons. Shared meals. Spontaneous music. Long talks by firelight. We laughed until something inside loosened. We cried without holding back. That’s how strangers become kin.
I left stronger but also softer. More alert. More myself. The wild isn’t something we visit—it’s something we carry. Survival? Yes. But more than that—revival. For more information on the Survival Sisterhood Retreat, visit Karieleeknoke.com.
Alana Livingston creates and guides experiences around Spokane that center storytelling, the outdoors and a lifelong curiosity shaped by her background in anthropology.
