Conference Takes Women on Exploration of Creative Options : Cal Lutheran: The daylong forum attracts about 1,000 to sessions ranging from computers to the South Pole.

At Cal Lutheran University on Saturday, Sunniva Sorby told 40 women about her trip to the South Pole.

In another classroom, about 17 women explored their “environmental personae.” Others learned about menopause, lesbian culture, dieting, “girl power” and Macintosh computers.

About 1,000 women attended the daylong Creative Options conference, sponsored by the American Assn. of University Women and the Cal Lutheran Women’s Resource Center.

Proceeds from the event fund scholarships for women re-entry students at Cal Lutheran. But organizer Kathryn Swanson said the day was also intended “as a community service, a forum for women to get together and explore possibilities.”

Sorby, who cross-country skied 670 miles to the South Pole as part of a four-woman team two years ago, urged her audience to consider the possibility of an outdoor adventure.

“I want to encourage you to learn to be confident in the outdoors, so you can challenge yourself,” Sorby said.

She instructed women on the fine points of adventure food, “GORP, or Good Old Raisins and Peanuts,” and on going to the bathroom in Antarctica. (Get behind the sled, and stay out of the wind, because you risk frostbite if your skin is exposed for too long.)

And while an expedition to Antarctica may be beyond the dreams of the average Ventura County office worker, Cynthia Bailey said that after watching Sorby’s slide show, she will consider it.

“I come alive when I’m outside,” Bailey said. “I’d like to start going into the wilderness.”

In another classroom, Judith Talbot taught a more practical skill, using a Macintosh computer. Those workshops, offered throughout the day, were among the most popular.

Amid the humming computers, Talbot explained the difference between clicking and double-clicking with the computerized pointing device.

“Double-clicking opens the file,” she said. “The hardest thing for people to get used to sometimes is the mouse.”

Virginia McKeehan, a retired substance abuse counselor who lives in Westlake, said she thought the Macintosh class was “a good opportunity.”

Lily Sugino spent the morning at a workshop on “cross-cultural team building,” and in the afternoon dressed as Japanese American author Yoshiko Uchida to help teach a class on “great moments with women in history.”

Sugino, a third-generation Japanese American who lives in Thousand Oaks, said she was pleased the keynote speaker this year was National Public Radio journalist Maria Hinojosa, a woman of color.

In addition to Hinojosa’s speech and an offering of 72 workshops, the event included lunch, information tables, a movie and a concert.

All the women and all the learning impressed even Hinojosa, who lives in New York and had just returned from a four-day reporting trip to Cuba.

“I will keep this in my head and it will be one of the things I can turn to when I get down in the doldrums,” she said, reviewing the full Cal Lutheran gymnasium at the start of a speech urging women to “listen to your inner voice.”

“You think of Southern California, middle of nowhere, and what you’re really finding are women in these circumstances are active,” Hinojosa said afterward. “It’s great.”