12:22 p.m. on May 16, 2012 (EDT)
MoZee said:
whomeworry said:
One night around the camp fire a companion waxed inebriatedly, if he had no paper he would “poop paperless.” He described the technique as pulling one’s checks wide apart, then forcibly defecating, such that no external body parts were soiled. TMI... Maybe rocks aren’t so bad after all.
Ed
AKA, "The power dump." A handy and widely used method at Montana state in my day. When the previous nights beer drinking would catch up to you in the middle of a very important lecture. The brand of beer you imbibed would play a part in the success of this method, hence Bud mud. Definitely not recommended if you were at a cheese tasting previously.
Okay, okay, I waited a couple days to see how this thread would "degenerate" and feel it's now appropriate to include some excepts from my 2008 trip reports on The Turd Diaries. An introduction:
A NECESSARY ADDITION TO THE TURD REPORTS---No one should start a thread on outdoor waste disposal without expecting a full report containing actual Turtlehead trail notes kept by Uncle Fungus---from the 2008 Journals.
TURTLEHEADS
ARCTIC MIDWIFERY
It takes a special breed of individual to strip half naked and to birth a mean and angry turtlehead into the snowy and frozen ground of a high mountain bald. Few are called, all must squat. Young Nanook was conceived from a meal I ate two days ago and after a 48 hour gestation was birthed using the Tundra Method: Slap him down on the snow and run like hell.
A true tundra baby will quickly form an igloo of stool and in several minutes will be as frozen as the snow around him. Ah, but yesterday I dug an unused hole so today Young Nanook's nursery was already prepared for immediate usage. Shunka The Dog as a carnivore would've eaten Young Nanook but he was across camp and I had Nanook buried quickly before Shunka's approaching breakfast.
POST PARTUM GLEE
Many people get post birth depression, but not me, the last thing I think about after squatting to release a young turtlehead is suicide, in fact, each birth makes me want to live that much more. So let's hear it for the humble turtlehead and though it gives its life smothered and buried, it allows us to go forward into the bright light of a new day, etc.
TURTLEHEAD REPORT
(Those easily offended should turn away). I went outside in the unstrung boots(still frozen)and squatted by the tent and birthed a healthy turtlehead atop the surface of the snow where it will remain until tomorrow when I'll have time to dig a proper hole and transport it in one frozen brick balanced on two sticks. As long as I don't step outside and get turtle-crocked(in my crocs), I'll be okay. Or maybe Shunka will find it and feast.
THE VIOLENT TURTLEHEAD
So wouldn't you know it but the first order of business after setting up the tent was to go off the ridge a bit and scrape out a hole to homebirth an angry and violent turtlehead. This newborn came in at 6.8 pounds, feisty with a fully functioning arm and hand as it reached out and tripped me up as I was walking away. And I heard a muffled chortle right before I fell.
THE FROZEN TURTLEHEAD
The normal non-Inuit turtlehead hates winter backpacking and the backpackers who do it, because since they regularly go from 100 degrees to zero(atop snow no less)in about one nano(nanal?)second--they hardly have time to survey their new kingdom before they are frozen solid. A completely frozen turtlehead though still lives and woe be to the idiot who picks up what seems to be a hard, solid woodlike object only later to find it to be, when thawed, a steaming, angry and pissed off human turd.
It's not a reptile, a frisbee or a polished chunk of knotwood, it's now a breathing, pulsating, unburied turtlehead, the worst kind. If discovered, drop immeditately and call no one. Never shove soiled hands down into pants as the smell of a foreign turtlehead will elicit your own yet-unborn turtlehead to emerge from hiding to investigate in fighting form and possibly wanting intimate congress or abruptly posturing itself in a fight or flight response. If you have an alpha turtlehead buried in your shorts, be prepared for an all out fight to the death.
On the other hand, the flight reponse will drive your own turtlehead deeper and higher into your body, possibly up into your chest cavity or throat. Good luck. All this can be avoided by not backpacking in the winter, and if you do pick up a frozen turtlehead by mistake, don't be around when it thaws. I've been out too long.
TO SHOVE OR NOT TO SHOVE
There's nothing as disturbing and yet as fulfilling as having to birth a combative and hysterical turtlehead into a cold morning snow and then having it look back at you with it's mournful brown eyes pleading to be reinserted and not left to freeze and be buried in a colon-less world. It takes a strong man to walk away from his own progeny and to become a dead beat Dad(dung-beat Dad?), and yet to placate, raise, retain and nurture one's own turd leads to distention, fecal impaction, severe lethargy and eventual unconsciousness. Better to have shoved and lost than to never have shoved at all.
THE PEE BRIGADE
There's a big bright moon over my left shoulder as I emerge from a cold tent to go out and unfurl the old freak flag and see who salutes(pee). A small group of nearby ants quickly stood in a tiny line and did a quick pass-in-review ceremony in honor of my 7th day urine flow. In the old days when I had a glistening healthy bladder tied to a fire engine-sized urethra-hose, I could get a whole series of ants and other insects to stand in formation and pay homage to what they called the Yellow Horde. Ruffles and flourishes, etc.
As soon as they noticed the emergence and the flopping out of my silk-clad nematode, they'd pull up and wait with rapt attention as my morning effluvia graced their little sylvan world. Now, with a nematode more like a dripping kitchen faucet, most highly trained army ants won't have anything to do with my morning reveille.
One time I was so popular with an ant pee brigade that after my morning ceremony a sPeecial Forces group of carpenter ants actually carried me slowly back to my tent like a million workers building the Pyramids. To us the pee stream is waste and effluent, pure and simple, but to the Ant Kingdom it's liquid gold. To say to someone, "You're an Ant!" might be a nasty quip, but to the 6 legged insects they hear Urine Ant, the highest compliment.
COMING NEXT:
How to organize a dung beetle rally using your own emerging turtlehead.
FINAL INSTALLMENT:
How I became a hero to butterflies using nothing but toe jam. (A fascinating account of human flight by a toe jam covered man carried in flight by over ten million butterflies).
THE PLAINTIVE CRY OF THE UNBOUND TURTLEHEAD
A faint poking sensation got me up from my squat and told me to dig a birthing hole for the newest addition to our hiking entourage, a glistening yellow-brown specimen coming in at 7.8 pounds. Shunka and I welcomed the newborn with festive shouts and wipings and then immediately smothered and buried it without fanfare. My skin out weight is now 8 lbs lighter. I basically gave birth to a 4 season tent, and if it wasn't for Shunka pulling out the back end of it with his teeth, it would still be half lodged in a failing-to-fully-dialate bunghole.
Backpackers must speak of such things as they regularly deal with pulsating turtleheads on a near daily basis and so any dayhikers reading this will find it offensive but they are a pitiful bunch who have no relationship whatsoever with their spurned and frightful offal offspring. Dayhikers dump a load at home before they leave and then dump their next after they get home, so how in Thor's name would they know anything about the joys and sorrows of birthing a turd out in the wild? Thank god therefore for this journal as it informs clueless dayhikers that yes, it's possible to drop stool in the woods and not leave a pile with toilet paper next to their cars (or at a trailhead next to a creek).
THE PLAINTIVE CALL OF THE MORNING TURTLEHEAD
What began as a mere urination became a full-out struggle to birth a long festering turtlehead onto the side of Bob's mountain. Sharp contractions followed by a bursting urine bag heralded the first crowning of a 7.4 pound turtlehead and with Shunka acting as my midwife nurse(mid-dog?), we managed to expel a Kimodo Dragon-sized reptile into the dug hole atop the ridge. Afterwards a naming ceremony occurred and a swaddling in dirt brought a newborn turtlehead into a turd-hating world.
After cleaning the area with alcohol(?), it was smothered and buried despite having a new name.
A PRIMER ON PEEING by Professor Uncle Fungus
When a man's biological unit tells him to get up and scuttle the submarine(or clear the frat house, even it it's at 2:30 in the morning), he best be advised to debag and detent to service said unit. When the male bladder hears the call of nature(more like the crying grunt of a young newt), the man attached to said bladder had best get up to defrock the priest, de-bride the newlywed, laminate the end table, clear the eustacian tubes, lather down the war horse and pee!
It's a simple process, really, the hard part is getting up off the pad and strapping on the headpiece . . . uh . . . headlamp. Unfurling the actual midnight worm from the bound codpiece and uncinching the blowhole happens more to gravity and the laws thereof(at my age)than due to any bladder-muscle pushing out said effluvium.
Newbies take careful note so when it's your turn to uncage the green mamba, you'll have an adequate amount of forewarning and skill given to you by Uncle Fungus in this short field report. On the other hand, when birthing an angry and hot turtlehead, it's every man for himself and what mishap, accident or surgery results from such birthing is beyond the scope of this short essay. I can only take your horse to water, you must yourself get it to pee(?).
more»
