S****ing in the Woods

Alright, it’s not what it looks like. It’s not another blog post dedicated entirely to; pooping, farting, boogers, or other things that made you laugh when you were twelve. I swear I am way more mature than that.

First, I would like to ask you a question, dear reader. Have you ever relieved yourself in the wilderness? I am not talking about drunkenly peeing in the yard at your friend’s house during last weekend’s party, because the line for the bathroom was too long. No, I am talking about executing a perfect bowel movement in all of its glory in front of birds, trees, fellow hikers, woman, children, and Mother Nature herself.

This weekend, I hiked South Sister, which was sweet. It’s a mountain, and I walked up it. To do this, I used only my legs, two water bottles, a ham sandwich and some homemade trail mix. On the way up, I got to see those super outdoorsy people, decked out in Patagonia, hiking boots, and walking poles.

These people would say things to each other like “Oh, jeez! Great boots! Where’d ya get those?”

Then their fellow outdoorsy people would say “REI, for 90 bucks!”

Then I would stand there in my cutoff and basketball shorts and feel increasingly bad about myself.

You need to be careful around outdoorsy people. They are mostly harmless, but if you do things like dump motor oil at the summit of a beautiful mountain, or say things like “Target is more affordable than REI,” they can get really vicious.

For example, I discarded a grape stem in front of some of my fellow hikers, figuring it would obviously be bio-degradable, or something. For the record, I am not clear what the hell ‘bio-degradable’ means. Nonetheless, I tossed the grape-stem.

“What are you doing?” one of my fellow hikers who owns more North Face clothing than I remarked.

“It’s biodegradable.” I retorted.

“Leave no trace, man,” one of the male outdoorsy men said.

“That will totally be a grape-tree by next year,” I said, trying to introduce them to a thing called humor.

“Pack it up,” the man demanded.

“Seriously?” I said.

“Gosh, I got it,” the woman said, swooping in to pick up my grape-stem, as if I had just taken the most violent, carnal, hideous s**t right in front of her, at her favorite water-stop on the South Sister Trail and refused to clean it up. Which I may or may not end up doing by the end of this cheap-bathroom-humor-inspired-blog-post.

Once we reached the summit, we did the typical outdoorsy photo shoot, and ate our extremely stereotypical lunch consisting of spinach, quinoa muffins, dried fruits that you didn’t even know existed, and almond butter and honey sandwiches with honey organically extracted from bee’s that the owner named and cared for daily, taking them on walks and enrolling them in bee school, where they learn to s**t a viscous, tasty liquid that eventually ends up in the mouths of hairy-under-armed woman everywhere.

“I hope these bees were treated well in the process of making this honey,” they probably said.

“Bees are so cute. And innocent,” someone would support the previous ridiculous statement, while I sat quietly, wondering why the hell, of ALL things, I brought a ham sandwich to this organic-gourmet-picnic.

“Oh, what’s that, a ham sandwich?” they would ask me.

“Yeah. My mom made it for me. She got the ham from Costco.” I would reply.

This would be the part where they throw me off of the cliff and condemn me for wearing a cut-off and killing pigs.

“No, this is actually ham-tofu,” I said, trying to make up ground.

“ It’s made to look just like it, but it tastes like an a**hole, so you know it’s vegan, organic, and all those other fancy words you guys use to describe the taste of cardboard!” I would reply.




After another failed attempt at humor in front of the hikers around me, I decided it would be best to keep to myself for the remainder of the hike. My choices were: roll-up into a ball, and hope to not hit rocks on the way down, use my size 15 Saucony’s as ski’s on the snowy slopes, or be in the defensive stance the entire time walking downhill, and pulverize my knees to the point that they start yelling at me.

I decided skiing would be cool because my feet are practically the size of skis anyway, and if nothing else, speed would be to my advantage.

This was the best idea I’ve had since that one line about ham-sandwiches and tofu, as I made it to the flatter portion of the hike significantly faster than during our ascent.

The bad news, however, was that ‘skiing’ involved a lot of bouncing. Lots and lots of bouncing.

You know what bouncing + ham sandwich equals? In almost all cases, it equals abhorrent diarrhea. This time was no different.

I spent a good 5-10 minutes convincing myself I didn’t have to go. I thought about the wildflowers. The rocks on the trail. That cute girl we just passed. The sloshing in my shoes from their waterlogged soles.

Pretty soon, the rocks turned into exact replicas of the pebbles of poop sitting in my stomach, and the sloshing of my shoes might as well have been a written invitation to lose my load in the middle of the trail.

So, I did what any reasonable person would do. I started biting down on my lower lip as hard as I could, to take my mind off of the World War that was occurring inside of my rectum.

When I nearly bit a hole through my lip, I decided it was time to call a time-out.
“SO…” I said. I realized this was the first time I had spoken in nearly 3 hours. It was one of those times that you’ve been so quiet, that you are startled by the sound of your own voice. The surprise in itself almost forced me to spill my guts.

“…say, if one, had to, um…relieve themselves in the woods, how would you guys recommend, um, taking care of that situation?” I ask to these people who hardly know me, and one person that knows me well enough to understand there is a decent chance that I have feces trickling down my thigh as we speak.

“Bro, we’re like a mile and a half from the base,” one of my hiking partners says.

“Yeah. No way I am making that. If we are being totally honest, there’s an extremely high likelihood that my a** might explode right now, and spew like a geyser over you and your lovely girlfriends head,” I said, losing all concept of humility, common sense, and decency all in the same breath.

“Dig a hole. Use snow to wipe. And a smooth, clean rock. It’s refreshing, and efficient,” my friend suggests.

I am already halfway up the hill, searching for the nearest closed off area.
“Catch up with you guys later!” I yelp, running up the hill, feeling my trail-mix, ready to bounce out of me.

I find a relatively hidden spot, and when I say ‘relatively hidden spot,’ I mean some trees I can hide behind about 10 feet off from the highly-populated trail. I dig my hole, shredding my cuticles in a feverish rush to empty out the most epic load of waste my body has ever housed.

I was foaming at the mouth, cringing, trying to keep my composure. By the time I had stripped my shirt off (felt necessary) and dropped my shorts, my bottom was making sounds that undoubtedly forced a dozen hikers to turn back, while simultaneously causing a landslide at the base of the mountain.

The birds, 40 feet above me in their nest, were chirping violently, as if to say “stop doing what you are doing. That is disgusting.” It was rather unsettling.

“I didn’t ask for an AUD…uuugggh…IENCE!” I squealed.

“CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP! Stop S****ING IN MY HOME, YOU A**HOLE!” They replied.

But nothing could stop me now. Not even pissed off birds high up in a juniper tree.
As the city of Bend grumbled, and Mt. St. Helens erupted from the aftershock, I stared at my excrement, partly in amazement, and party wondering, “how the hell am I going to cover this up? A bulldozer?”

I then proceeded to use a snowball in a way that snowballs should never be used, and found the nearest rock, that was neither smooth, nor clean, nor pleasant to repeatedly grind against the soft tissue of my out-hole, but I made do.

I called in a forklift, and buried my trace, thinking of that damn “leave no trace” hiker, and as I stood up, I was overwhelmed with the greatest feeling of accomplishment since I was first potty trained, three years ago.

I was greeted by my fellow hikers with hugs, high-fives, and “dude, that was so inappropriate, you were hardly off from the trail,” and “why did you feel the need to take your shirt off?”

But none of that mattered. What mattered was, I was now 10 lbs lighter, and I just had one of the most successful bowel-movements of my 21 years on this planet.

As I neared back to the trail, I looked at my hiking group, and the numerous yuppies just embarking on their South Sister journey in the early-afternoon. I smiled and waved to each and every one of them, half of me hoping to God they stay away from those trees, and the other half hoping they have the exact same experience I just did, at some point in their life. I left a part of myself on that mountain that day. A part I will never get back. And I couldn’t be happier.