I love the outdoors. Most of it.

Especially the beach. Also places that don't have a lot of bugs or mud or overgrown foliage. OK, I love the outdoors in theory.

I have never used the word "outdoors woman" to describe myself. I luxuriate in hot showers, delight in ceiling fans and really like having a place to charge my phone at night. Turns out I have become fairly set in my comfortable urban ways, very rarely interacting with actual nature.

So news of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's Becoming an Outdoors Woman workshop, held annually at a few locations throughout the state, could not have come at a better time to shake me from my weekend gym-tan-laundry rut.

Learn how to pitch a tent, start a fire, shoot a gun and fish? Sign me up! And get me some bug spray. And a sleeping bag and last-minute fishing license.

The commission holds these three-day workshops three times a year: one in Panama City, one in Ocala and one in West Palm Beach. I attended the November 2010 session at the J.W. Corbett Wildlife Management Area in Palm Beach County, a 60,000-plus-acre expanse set aside for hunting, camping and exploring.

Giant birds of prey (I didn't take the bird-watching basics class, so I don't know which ones) circled overhead as I drove up. In the parking lot, a car wore this bumper sticker: "Guns don't kill people. People with mustaches kill people."

Toto, I don't think we're in South Beach anymore.

Ahead: Classes on basic camping and backpacking, wilderness survival, shotgun shooting and bass fishing. Also, an introduction to sleeping in a tent, inflating a crumpled air mattress in the middle of the night and overcoming my fears of a dirty communal shower.

Basic camping and backpacking served as a perfect introduction for someone who has never done either. The instructors were cheerful and realistic, warning about bugs, showing off a book called How to S--- in the Woods, demonstrating almost every piece of equipment imaginable and sharing tips they have gathered during decades of camping.

These include, in order of importance: Put your wine in a Platypus wine preserver bag and keep it next to frozen water bottles, set up your tent on high ground, pack something fancy to cook under the stars and don't forget the cosmetics.

We newbies joined forces to set up a practice tent, which was useful for me and less so for the other women, who chose to stay in camplike cabins with bunks.

As I tried to piece my own borrowed tent together a little while later, it became clear that I should have paid more attention in class or opted for the cabins. With a few extra pairs of hands, though, the bright blue and yellow tent finally went up.

After dinner, activities include night hikes, a laughter seminar, astronomy, arts and crafts and campfire (enjoying, not building).

Staying alive, however, sounded great. After a cold night in the tent, interrupted repeatedly by my air mattress deflating, I was ready for breakfast and survival class.

We learned how to make fire without matches. We searched out branches and created makeshift shelters, navigated with an actual compass and learned this very important, very disgusting survival tip: Always pack something that you would eat only if it would save you from starving to death. That something should be cat food.

I needed to go shoot something after that. But only because my next class was intro to shotgun shooting and hunting.

Guns, like hunting, are not my area of interest. I'm the daughter of former hippies, a onetime police reporter who wrote often about gun violence (and once lived in a neighborhood where gunshots were common). The class freaked me out a few times.

That said, the instructors were meticulous about safety and perfectly patient with my lack of shooting skills and frequent cries of pain when the shotgun hit my shoulder.

For Amanda Arroyo, a New York City native who was terrified of bugs and the outdoors in general, the workshop was a way to ease into a comfortable relationship with nature.

"The more you're outdoors and you realize it's cool, you're safe, nothing's happening to me, the less fearsome you are of it," she said. "That's where I'm going to be eventually."

As for me, I feel like I could pitch a tent with less drama, try fishing again and maybe even start a fire. I've still got the Vaseline-coated cotton ball, slimy worm bait and fishing license, just in case.