Heather Labenski describes her best friend Cherie Calabrese as “different, but like-minded.” They met in 2004 at a Women’s Wilderness Weekend at Alton Jones Campus in West Greenwich.

Women’s Wilderness Weekend is a women’s retreat that takes place in the fall, winter and spring at Alton Jones Campus. It began in 1975.

Calabrese is originally from Cranston and said she first came to Alton Jones to camp with the Cranston Public Schools when she was ten years old.

“This property [Alton Jones] means so much to me,” she said over breakfast on the Saturday of the recent retreat. She said later, “Every decade of my life there’s been an experience with this property.”

As a child Calabrese camped; as an adolescent she was a counselor, and in her twenties she introduced her children to Alton Jones. Her connection to the property “gets deeper and deeper,” she says.

When she was in her early thirties, Calabrese first attended a Wilderness Weekend; now she’s the organization’s president. She hasn’t missed a weekend in ten years, she says. And, she still stays in Cabin Five, the same cabin she stayed in as a child.

Calabrese said the mission statement of the Wilderness Weekend is for “women to reconnect with themselves, other women, and nature.”

When Labenski first attended a Weekend in 2004, it was her first visit to Alton Jones. She said Calabrese was not president at the time, but she welcomed Labenski as a newcomer. Labenski said Calabrese knew “how to use the property” and was “smitten” with it, and with the retreat. She said Calabrese’s enthusiasm was “infectious.” The two became friends and Labenski travels from Walpole, Massachusetts to attend the Wilderness Weekends. Women from five states attended the October retreat, including several who trekked from Florida.

“You never know what treasure you’re going to find [at a Weekend],” Labenski said. She said it was at a Wilderness Weekend where she discovered her love of knitting. At the Wilderness Weekend, women participate in a medley of activities. Outdoor activities include kayaking, canoeing, a challenge course and hikes in Arcadia. Calabrese said there are quiet hikes, noisy hikes, and nocturnal hikes. She said the nocturnal hike, sans flashlights, took place the prior evening and was led by Cal Wren, a former field studies teacher at the University of Rhode Island. She said, on the nocturnal hike, Wren educated the women about night vision and various nocturnal organisms. Calabrese said the hike “heightens your appreciation of nature,” “bringing it alive.”

Labenski saw her first lightning bug larvae on the hike.

There are also indoor activities such as cooking, mediation, crafts, tai chi, yoga, and croning. Croning is a ritual to honor aging women.

After breakfast, the women broke up into groups to attend different classes. Nature Writing was taught by artist and performer, Aubrey Atwater. Atwater wore a braid and gray sweater, and spoke softly. In the lower level of the Environmental Education Center, she opened the class by reading poems by Lucille Clifton, Mary Oliver, and a poem she composed herself. The class brainstormed about what makes up good writing, what makes a piece of writing evocative, and why something becomes a cliché. Atwater led the class in several writing exercises and let them writing wherever they felt comfortable. The class consisted of seven women, all with different levels of writing experience. One exercise was to describe something using all five senses; another was to write without using certain ‘taboo’ words. In between exercises, Atwater played a song she wrote and sang for the class.

Other classes that morning included mask-making and stamping; however, there was no mandate to attend any class. A woman could sit on one of two couches in the main lodge, next to the hearth and read all weekend, undisturbed. And upstairs, several women were doing just that.

They sat under the high, wooden-beamed ceiling in the main hall, surrounded by wood paneling and many windows looking out onto the campus. Three potted ferns and a woodcutting of a family of deer kept them company. Smells leftover from breakfast mixed with that of craft supplies. A fleet of banquet tables in the same room held every craft supply imaginable: yarn, paints, glitter, ribbons, pumpkins for carving, etc.

While sitting amongst the crafts, Labenski said, “there are some people who pass through [the weekend] at different times in their lives, and lifers.” She described the retreat as “kindness and mutual respect for the individual experience.” While at the retreat, she said she learned “not to be so hard on myself.” And of the cooked meals, “food tastes better when someone else makes it,” she says.

Labenski said that although the October weekend’s group was on the quiet side, “raucous” scrabble games are common at the retreats.

The women who opted for the outdoor challenge course that morning bounded in around lunchtime. Among them were Wren and Calabrese.

Calabrese said that the challenge course taught lessons in “developing trust” with members of your team, “stretching your own comfort zone, and “getting back in touch with your inner child.”

Wren echoed the activities are about doing “things you used to do as a kid, and getting back to that.”

Calabrese said that half of the participants come on a regular basis and “each season brings a different feel.” In winter, she said ladies “go out on fresh fallen snow” and “become one with it [nature].”

For more information about Women’s Wilderness Weekend, go to womenswildernessweekendri.com.