Answering Nature's Call

Everybody poops. Hopefully, we have all realized this fact by now and can handle the subject like the mature adults that we are (or, at least, like the ones we pretend to be). (A side note: If this news is coming a surprise to you, I strongly suggest you stop reading and consult a gastroenterologist immediately.)

When you put food in your body, it eventually has to come out. With the exception of our earliest years and, in some cases, our last years on Earth, this process is dealt with in a relatively neat and orderly fashion. As anyone who has spent much time camping can attest, in the woods, the law of bodily in-and-out remains set in stone. When it comes to liquids, being a guy in the forest leaves me with an endless sea of possible toilets. In the case of solids, I have dug a toilet a decent distance away from my campsite where I can go.

However, let's face it, a simple hole in the ground requires squatting--not a problem once or twice when spending a weekend off the grid, but after a week it gets a little annoying. The previously referenced law of digestion, combined with Murphy's law, means it is almost always very cold and/or wet whenever nature calls. As a result, more than once I've been forced to combine both squatting and violently shivering into some sort of awkward dance of digestion. A ballet of the bowels, if you will; a disco of digestion; a shimmy of--sorry, I forgot I'm supposed to be feigning maturity.

If after one week, this becomes a little annoying, then after two weeks, you come to dread the inevitable; after three you're ready to limit your diet to nothing but cheese and red meat; after four, you finally do something about it. Hitting that four week mark on Saturday, I said, "The hell with squatting," and hiked myself to the other end of the property to collect the seat from a discarded toilet I had seen. Once back in camp, I cleaned the seat off, grabbed a few nails, some smaller logs, and built a proper toilet. And without going into too much detail, the next time natured called, I was only too happy to respond.

A throne fit for a king.