This is How God Wants You to Poop (Outside)

I updated THIS chart from LNT to be theologically accurate.

Let’s talk about poop. Pooping is this totally normal thing that we do. I’m no scientist but my understanding is that after we eat food, it turns to moosh in our bodies as the healthy bits (or unhealthy bits) go into our bones and muscles and stuff. The leftover moosh builds up until we can’t take it anymore and we push it out our buttholes. We all do it. You might be doing it right now. 

Working as a backpacking guide in Colorado, I literally got paid to talk about poop. Taking a group of thirteen teenagers on a multi-day trip in the woods means they’re going to poop. It was my job to teach them how to do it responsibly. The normal range for daily pooping is from three times a day to once every three days. So let’s say the average person poops once a day. Thirteen teenagers plus four adults backpacking for five nights equals 85 poops, give or take. 

*insert Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park clip*

Nobody likes to talk about poop or pooping because of another science thingy: the psychological impulse of disgust. Once the thing — the poop — has been removed from our bodies it is other. It’s set apart and its set a part-ness makes it foul and icky. Unclean. This makes sense. Human communities are living things that must necessarily make boundaries between clean and unclean. This is good and practical. For example, you shouldn’t eat egg salad made on the back of a toilet in a truck stop bathroom. The impulse of separating clean and unclean is an ancient one. 

(SIDEBAR: This desire for purity is a good one. The danger comes when we start making distinctions between “clean” and “unclean” people. Please don’t do this. In the Gospels, we repeatedly see Jesus blurring the boundaries between clean and unclean through his table fellowship with tax collectors and prostitutes. Please do that.)

One of my favorite weird biblical texts is an obscure commandment made in Deuteronomy 23:12-14. Here, God sets the regulations for the proper method for disposing of the Israelites’ poop during a military campaign. 

"You shall have a designated area outside the camp to which you shall go. With your utensils you shall have a trowel; when you relieve yourself outside, you shall dig a hole with it and then cover up your excrement. Because the Lord your God travels along with your camp, to save you and to hand over your enemies to you, therefore your camp must be holy, so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you."

These banal and mundane requirements of hygiene cloaked in theological language make practical good sense when large numbers of men are living close together in hastily-built and ill-protected conditions. In fact, modern outdoorsy-types familiar with proper Leave No Trace principles will recognize the most widely accepted LNT practice of waste disposal: the cat hole method (LNT Principle 3). For those taking notes, here’s a side-by-side comparison: 

Two out of three ain't bad. 

Although hygiene is the most obvious objective of proper poop disposal, Gerhard von Rad, Walter Brueggemann, and J.G. McConville all assert that the real underpinning behind the ancient Near Eastern Leave No Trace method is holiness. Holiness is, after all, the proper habitat of God. According to these scholars, the rules outlined in Deuteronomy 23.12-14 are determined by the cultic and ritual assumptions of primitive peoples. The cultic ritual is a precondition for Israel’s military success. 

But I'd argue that the rationale is not entirely cultic, nor is it totally about public health. It's somewhere in between. Actually, the whole reason is rather pedestrian. Let’s take a closer look at v. 14. It reads, “Because the LORD your God travels along with your camp…” Or in Hebrew: מִתְהַלֵּךְ בְקֶרֶב מַחֲנֶךָ or “God paces/walks with your camp.” See? Pedestrian. Israel must go outside the camp, dig a hole, and bury it is because God doesn’t want to step in their poop. 

What’s truly astonishing to me is that throughout the long editorial process of compiling what would become the Hebrew Bible, the ancient Israelites felt compelled to include this in their holy scriptures. The proper disposal of one's poop is enshrined forever in the 613 mitzvot. Perhaps you find it a bit nutty to consider what this ancient text and these pre-scientific people did or thought. Perhaps you fancy yourself a modern man, you're thinking, "I don't derive my ethics from ancient narratives, I get my morality from corporations like Amazon and Netflix." Yes, you're very sophisticated. 

Dismissing ancient wisdom just because you have an iPhone is insane. Instead, maybe do the work of finding principles within the Law and making application in a different setting and context? It adds flexibility to a law and allows it to find meaning when the particular circumstances of a law have changed. You can see how this can be helpful not just for pooping outside but also, for example: debt and loaning on interest, which is the paradigmatic evil in the Old Testament. 

"Literalism is the lowest form of meaning."

Or you can roll your eyes all you want at these ancient “primitives.” But I bet if we had more folks think about what they did with their poop as thoroughly as the ancient Israelites, you wouldn’t wander off into the woods at Foster Falls and find a big ol’ pile of human excrement twenty-feet away from a popular sport climb. Yes, we're very sophisticated these days.  

So next time you're out in the woods and you have to take a dump, ask yourself what would ancient Israel do? God doesn’t want to step in poo and neither should you. So please, for God’s sake, leave no trace.

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Zen and the Art of Hike-a-Bike

photo by Brooks

Unpopular opinion: I love hike-a-bike. I really do. Hike-a-bike is the act of pushing, pulling, or carrying your bike, usually because the terrain is too steep or too loose to pedal. In the bicycling community, this would be like saying, “I enjoy paying taxes” or “I love washing the dishes.” A friend once threatened to extend the ride by 13 miles just to avoid a short hike-a-bike up a steep horse trail. Paying taxes, washing the dishes, or pushing your bike up a hill can be difficult and tiresome but also incredibly mundane - Sisyphean even. 

Thich Nhat Hanh claimed you can meditate while washing the dishes. Think about that. The second most-famous living Buddhist (second only to the Dali Lama), a world-renowned and revered Zen master says you can do this transcendent-touching, nirvana-actuating activity while doing something as banal as washing your dishes. That’s amazing. And, I think, if you can meditate while doing the dishes, you can meditate while pushing your bike up an enormous hill. If you don’t ride a bike very much, copy and paste this into your word processor and word search and replace “hike-a-bike” with whatever “hard thing” it is that you do. The same can probably be said about trail running, climbing off-widths, or sinking a putt for birdie. 

A Buddhist once described meditation to me as the middle of a three-circle Venn diagram, where the three circles are concentration, awareness, and mindfulness. Concentration is the ability to focus tightly on an anchor or object of meditation. Richard Rohr, a Catholic contemplative, describes this exercise as “a long, loving look at the Real.” While a ridgeline, the end of a switchback, or the backside of your friend who’s way ahead of you is not the Ultimate Reality, I find the ability to focus tightly on an anchor like this good practice for the real deal — the lotus position under a bodhi tree or washing the dishes kind of real deal.

Awareness and mindfulness are more difficult to differentiate. Both help us be present. Anyone can white-knuckle grin and bear it to the top of a hill. Or clasp their eyes shut  until finally the singing bowl bell gongs. I have. These experiences sucked. Meditation is more than the furrowed brow of concentration. It also requires the space to have a sense of all that is happening around you. In other words, having a sense of our physical sensations and mental contingencies while keeping an object of meditation. 

The textural sound of pea gravel beneath my shoes and tires. The pleasant ambiance of the forest: locusts, birds, and streams. The feeling of sweat in my mustache, hunger in my belly, and fatigue in my legs. Seeing the path of least resistance ahead of me. Noticing the rutted dirt, the blocks of rocks, or even the owl in the tree. Noticing it all for what they are while ever moving toward the anchor. That's meditation. 

If this sounds all too much for you, try this. The next time you’re pushing your bike up some heinous climb, take some deep breaths. Begin to notice 5 things you see; 4 things you hear; 3 things you feel; 2 things you smell; and 1 thing you taste. I promise you won’t regret it. You may not achieve nirvana but you’ll be closer to getting back on your bike and with a more “present-presence” than you would have otherwise. I think a 20% grade climb up loose gravel in a forest is a worthy monastery or meditation cushion. There are no to-do lists, emails, or notifications. Really, the only thing that exists is the present moment. So just be there. Or rather, just be. 

Meditation or looking deeply, Thich Nhat Hanh says, is to see the true nature of things. Which, according to Buddhism, is to see and understand things as impermanent. You don’t have to be Buddhist to appreciate this. The hill I am pushing my bike up; the feelings of joy and grief I experience; the thoughts of compassion and greed that come and go inside my head; indeed, my very life is not forever. How could they? The future doesn’t exist (this is a hill I am willing to die on). 

Don’t believe me? Listen to Marc E., from Collection 8, Episode 3 of The Great British Baking Show. Marc finished his showstopper dharma wheel cake while the other bakers worked frantically to finish their final touches. Sitting on his stool, like a zen master with a Cornish accent, he counseled, 

“I take every opportunity I can just to take a mindful breath. Just kind of brings me back to the present moment. ‘Cause when you think about it, when we’re worrying, we’re worrying about things that happened in our past. Or [we’re] worrying about the future. And ultimately, we’ve got no control over that, have we?… Of course, it’s easier said than done.”

Easier said than done. Like pushing a bike up a hill. Thanks, Marc. 

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On spirit animals and singlespeed bicycles

A few weeks ago, I was standing in a circle of volunteers before an adaptive mountain biking event. We were all introducing ourselves with some first-day-of-summer-camp-type questions: "What's your name?" "How long have you been biking?" And, "what's your spirit animal?" Everyone knows my spirit animal is an alligator. If you didn't, now you do. I'm from Florida. I love swamps. And I'm tremendously introverted so chilling at the bottom of a river or sunbathing on a log while also scaring away like 98% of people by merely existing sounds really nice. This wasn't the first time I've been asked about my spirit animal and I've obviously put a lot of thought into it. However, when it was my turn in the circle to share I freaked out. I forgot all about alligators. "Hi, my name is Chet. I started mountain biking during the pandemic and," I continued, "my spirit animal is... a wiener dog."

A wiener dog. I didn't even say dachshund (the scientific word for a wiener dog). I had one shot and I blew it. 

For context, I used to have a wiener dog. He was gifted to us when I was in first grade. My sister and I named him Wishbone. He was not your ordinary, high-maintenance, miniature dachshund. Wishbone was fearless and thought himself to be about the size of a St. Bernard. Our neighbors had horses and Wishbone would chase after these elegant animals, roughly a quadrillionth of his size, barking and threatening to bite their hooves or ankles if they would just have the common decency to dare him to do so. Wishbone was a menace engaged in a false sense of competition with every animal bigger and better than him. 

Every afternoon Wishbone would run along the fence line, made of hog wire, and antagonize our backdoor neighbor's Chow Chow named Chili. Chow Chows are bellicose and territorial dogs but Chili tolerated Wishbone's war of aggression for years until finally, Chili had enough. One day he stuck his head through the hog wire, pulled Wishbone through by the neck, and proceeded to whirl our beloved pet around the same way an orca throws around a baby seal before she eats it. My Uncle Ray and I bore witness to the melee while playing catch in the backyard. Ray moved into action and tagged Chili with a baseball. I don't remember how far away he made the throw from, but it was impressive. It stunned the dog long enough for me to hop the fence and scoop up our blood and piss-soaked pup. (I learned that while fighting, dogs urinate on the other dog as a way of adding insult to injury. Brutal.)

Wishbone: Grade-A good boy.

Wishbone was fine. He healed up quite nicely with three permanent puncture wounds around his jugular. He lived a remarkably long life pestering animals more than twice his size. Classic Napoleon Complex. 

Napoleon Bonaparte was believed to be an unusually short man (historically inaccurate) whose insecurities propelled him toward aggressive, militaristic authoritarianism (correlation is not causation). Alfred Adler coined the term "Napoleon Complex" to describe people who possessed an aggressive and authoritative attitude to compensate for their short height. GASP! Deeper meaning? I mean I am short but few people would describe me as "aggressive." 

That said, I am not without other inferiorities or insecurities and sometimes these drive me, like my dog Wishbone, toward irrational and irresponsible Napoleonic impulses. For example, riding a singlespeed bicycle makes me behave a little like the French Consulate. 

A few days before my spirit animal blunder at the adaptive MTB event, I arrived at a local trailhead the same time as a fancy Santa Cruz full-suspension bike. I got up the initial climb on my rigid singlespeed first, and I made it a goal to never let him catch up with me the rest of the ride. In other words, I was mentally racing a guy who, for all I know, was just out for a nice, leisurely, after-work ramble. It didn't matter. I showed no mercy, I took no prisoners, and I gave no quarter. Unbeknownst to him, my budget-built all-terrain bicycle and I destroyed him. This was my Battle of Austerlitz. 

My chest swelled with pride! And then collapsed. And then rose and collapsed again. I was gassed and totally out of breath. I ripped my legs off for one lap around the park but for what? To beat an oblivious opponent only to stop long enough to catch my breath and watch this guy come granny-gearing up the hill before dropping in for another spin around the downhill section. My Austerlitz was also my Waterloo. 

There I was the beaten, battered, and pee-pee-soaked wiener dog of Stringers Ridge mountain bike trails. Don't be like me. Enjoy riding your bike for the sake of riding your bike. I hope your trail spirit animal is better than mine. Like a jack rabbit or a mountain lion. Maybe one day I'll get the fat bike I want and my spirit animal can be this seal that flubbers onto shore and farts while looking directly at the camera.

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United States of Apocalypse

Rising emissions, rising temperatures, rising sea levels; if more is a good thing, then you could say we’re killing it. USA #1! Maybe it’s more helpful to say corporations are killing it. Either way, something is dying and, oh, by the way, it’s the earth. The overwhelming majority of scientists who specialize in the earth’s climate (not politicians, political commentators, or stay-at-home moms on Facebook) unequivocally affirm that we’re in a human-created ecological crisis.

There's no more avoiding our climate-induced collapse. Irreversible ecological damage is here and our current political-economic system is incapable of dealing with it. Short of an international mass movement of monkeywrenchers dismantling fossil fuel extraction around the globe, we're going to have to adapt to our new nightmarish hellscape. Look around: California is forever on fire, Florida is annihilated by a hurricane six months a year, and increasing swaths of Louisiana are already underwater.

We are already citizens of a new place: the United States of Apocalypse. To help us prepare for our dystopia, I have divided our new country according to how each region will become a real-life post-apocalyptic film. 

East Coast + Rust Belt: Judge Dredd (1995)

Judge Dredd begins with James Earl Jones' ominous narration, "The Earth transformed into a poisonous, scorched desert, known as 'The Cursed Earth.' Millions of people crowded into a few Megacities... Law, as we know it, collapsed. From the decay rose a new order, a society ruled by a new, elite force." The Judges are fascistic law enforcers who rule the megacities with brute force and little to no due process. For much of the densely populated eastern seaboard and post-industrial "rust belt" this future already exists. Only now you will receive your extrajudicial killings and police brutality with an extra dose of heat and humidity. 

Appalachia: The Road (2009) with a  C.H.U.D. (1984) twist
The rural bits of the southeast, i.e., Lyndon B. Johnson's socio-economic "Appalachia," will be Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets the cult classic, C.H.U.D. The sun will be blotted out by ash, but instead of nuclear holocaust or whatever unnamed event from The Road, it will be caused by the raging forest fires. Roving bands of cannibals (leftover maga chuds) in jacked-up trucks will roam the ashen grey hills in search of fresh flesh, AKA baby meat. These cannibalistic humanoid Appalachian dwellers or "CHADs" won't feel bad about it either because, spoiler alert, they were never really "pro-life" to begin with. 

 

Gulf Coast: Water World (1995)

Rising sea levels will turn the entire states of Florida and Louisiana and much of southern Alabama, Mississippi, and East Texas into Kevin Costner's Water World. Inhabitants who have not already will be forced to pawn their belongings to buy wave runners and become pirates. Sounds nice, actually. Except, something tells me warmer waters will cause alligators to evolve back into full-fledged dinosaurs. I mean, they're already climbing trees. 

 

 

Midwest, Mountain West, and Southwest: Mad Max (1979, 1981, 1985, 2015)

The biggest geographical region deserves the biggest post-apocalyptic film franchise. The majority of the landlocked United States will resemble the Mad Max universe. The Great Plains will be choked dry by drought and industrial farming. Think Great Depression "Dust Bowl" meets marauding gangs of leather-clad, daddy-issues off-roadsters. Most will be forced to move to coastal megacities and the few that remain will scavenge or pillage for limited food and resources to survive. Of course, Americans' market-based health care system already resembles the Thunderdome, so now you will have to duel to the death in a gladiatorial arena for Oklahoma's last can of franks n' beans. 

 

West Coast: Soylent Green (1973)

Imagine a world where climate catastrophe causes severe shortages of food, water, and housing. Okay, you're imagining liberal enclaves, Los Angeles and Seattle. Now imagine a world where society is almost entirely dependent on a singular global corporation, which controls the supply of most of the earth's necessities and brutally exploits its workers. Okay, now you're imagining Amazon. Shortages and supply bottlenecks create daily riots policed by corporate-sponsored armed forces who, unsurprisingly, brutally remove protesters with no due process. Welcome to Portland, Oregon. 

Behold our future and the future is bleak. But lest I be accused of casual nihilism or climate fatalism, I am not without hope. A long time ago I heard someone say that realism without idealism leads to apathy and idealism without realism leads to cynicism. I, personally, tend toward the latter and this post is probably a bit of both. Yet I hope it is, at least, a humorous caricature of the absurd landscape climate fatalism will bring. The truth is we don't have to accept this cursed earth future. Things, drastic or difficult they may be, can still be done to reduce the harm and suffering that our climate crisis is causing and will continue to cause. 

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5 Things I've Noticed While Riding a Bike

Figure 1

I'm no Alex Howes but I've ridden my bike enough to notice some things. For example, the more miles I ride, the more pizza I need. The more pizza I eat, the more miles I need to bike. (Fig. 1). I've noticed other things. Like, cyclists love data. Cyclists are on Strava because they crave the data. They need the data. They want to become one with the data. And since I am a visual learner who loves charts and graphs, I have systematized the data for you to consume and become one with. Let's start with some easy direct correlations and ease our way into more advanced behavioral economics.

Figure 2 

A redneck friend of mine said that anybody with tires over 33” is compensating for something. Whether that is true or not, and it definitely is, it is true that anyone driving a truck with tires over 33” is guaranteed to not give you your three feet (T.C.A. §55-8-175). This is especially true if they have a Punisher symbol anywhere on their Jeep or truck. These people do not care if you live or die, and they take some pride in that misanthropy. I am nearly convinced in a medieval, Dantean, abysmal hell because of people like them. Essentially, the bigger the truck: the bigger the pile of loose, sloppy stool in the driver's seat. 

Figure 3

The same can be said for sports car people. Generally speaking the louder the car (or truck) the more inconsiderate (re: deadly) the driver. This includes American muscle and imported Fast and Furious wannabes. A while back, I lectured some mid-life-crisis in a convertible at a stoplight about T.C.A. §55-8-175. It states that a cyclist does, in fact, ride in the road, not the sidewalk (and may even take up the entire righthand lane). He flipped me off, revved his engine, and “drag raced” me at the green light. Cool? I casually rode my bike and pulled up next to him at the next red light. Nice.

Figure 4

I’m always in an imaginary race with geared cyclists on the trail. I'm like a little wiener dog with a Napoleon complex at the dog park. I just want to run with the big dogs. RIP legs. 

Figure 5

In Figure 1, I stated that the more miles I ride, the more pizza I need. True. But I also noticed that I don't have to ride my bike very far to demand pizza. In economics, a perfectly inelastic demand curve means that no matter the price, the quantity demanded will always remain the same. For example, a person’s demand for insulin stays the same regardless of how much it costs (we need Medicare For All, now!). Assuming “miles biked” is represented on the “price” or y-axis and “pizza” on the “quantity demanded” or x-axis, the demand for pizza stays the same no matter how many miles biked. Whether I ride my bike 10 miles or 100, pizza and beer sound nice. 

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