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| the best outdoor toilet there ever was. |
After a life of family hiking trips, I started backpacking with my best friend as soon as we could drive. Every weekend we would backpack Torreya State Park, "The Mountains of Florida," on the the high bluffs along the Appalachicola River; so much so, we got sick of it. Then we made a copy of the key to the same friend's church's trailer of canoes and started taking long paddling trips on Florida's scenic rivers. Not once did I ever poop outside.
I wasn't scared of dropping deuces in the woods, though Deliverance didn't help. And I wasn't grossed out by wiping with leaves. I just preferred the comfort of my own toilet, my own toilet paper, reading material, and privacy. I could hold it for a weekend.
Until one time on the Wacissa River the weight of the world dropped in my stomach while portaging through Slave Canal. There was no waiting this one out.
This wasn't prairie dogging, this was a raging black bear charging through my digestive tract.
And at that moment, at a safe distance from any water source, I became a man.
Pooping in the woods is a rite of passage. In an instant one may go from discomforted dayhiker to liberated mountain lover. As made evident from a
recent post, it only takes a few nights outdoors for even the most insecure nature newcomer to embrace their ancestral instinct
and be completely open about it.
You can google "how to poop in the woods" and get more than 3,890,000 search results. And aside from some important Leave No Trace principles, it just seems a bit ridiculous. Are we that far removed from our ancestral roots that we can't put 2 and 2 together to take a #2 sans toilet?
Our ancestors pooped au naturale. Our human brothers and sisters across the globe still wipe with corn cobs and river stones. Yet we won't talk about it unless it's in an off color birthday card and middle school boys won't even admit that girls do it.
Our indifference to pooping outside forces the question, "Are we not human?"
I hope then we shall answer, "Nay! We are mountaineers! Dirtbags and trailrunners! Climbers and kayakers!"
Let us celebrate the fact that we can crap amongst the pines and the hemlocks while the rest of Western Civilization poops anxiously in dimly lit public restrooms.
Let us celebrate that we can defecate serenaded by cicadas and frogs and the distant sound of streams while our classmates and coworkers listen in on noisy stall neighbors, on phone calls and flatulences and explosive diarrhea.
Let us celebrate that we can drop a load surrounded by mountains while friends and family settle for wet seats, hemorrhoids, and single ply toilet paper.
Let us then speak the good news of pooping in woods! Let us tear down the social constructs of lavatory amenities! Let us share the liberating power of backcountry pooping!
The best excretion experience I had in the backcountry was somewhere in Sunshine Canyon outside Boulder, Colorado. If you follow Mapleton Avenue out of town, up the mountain meandering through the
mountain community of Gold Hill and then down the canyon, you'll find yourself in the solitude of the foothills of the Rockies. It is truly lovely.
In the half-light of morning, coffee brewing on the tailgate of the truck, I wondered down the hill, shovel in hand to find a fabulously fallen tree resting perpendicular with the ground at an angle prime for squatting. Small limbs broken off over time made an actual toilet paper roll. An eight inch cat hole purposely placed for perfect aim, a mountain vista, the cool breeze on my posterior, the Stephanie Davis memoir,
High Infatuation and I was in poopoo heaven. It was like MTV Cribs meets Little House on the Prairie.
I didn't want it to end.
Any attempt to articulate in words this majestic experience would be an understatement. So allow this picture to suffice:
Let us celebrate our forested fecal fertilizations!
What's your story? What's your best or favorite outdoor crap tale?
