I remember taking a shit over a log when I was little and wiping my ass with fallen leaves, as I had been instructed to do, mind you, by one or the other parental unit. It must have been early fall, a beautiful time of year when the leaves turn every color imaginable—including, inevitably, brown.
My family was camping and the urgency arose on a short hike. There were no good “civilized” bathroom options, but a log actually works fairly well if it’s big enough to hang your rear over. At that age, a small log worked great for me, though today, I’m sad to say, I would require a much, much larger log. In any case, my biggest complaint about that reconnecting-with-nature shit were the leaves, which, for all their beauty and usefulness for photosynthesis, etc., have virtually no absorbent qualities and serve only to smear. Additionally, they are easily perforated by small fingers.
Years later, after being privy to many a backwoods hiking trip shit, I would learn that an upright log, also known as a tree, is actually about the best nature made toilet one can hope for. Just dig a small hole next to the tree about 6 inches deep for your deposit, brace your back against it like you’re doing one of those excruciating wall squats at the gym, and hope that you’re not constipated, or that you’re in really good shape, because those wall squats are hard to hold for long. Also, don’t forget to take a wide stance or you will shit on your feet.
Today I tend to camp at more civilized accommodations, often at campgrounds with flush toilets, but sometimes, the grounds are a bit more rustic and an outhouse is the only option. Recently, I went camping near Ely, MN, at Birch Lake. The grounds had several neatly maintained outhouses, and I have to tell you, for me, there is no better bathroom option than an outhouse.
An outhouse has most of the treasured assets of your typical bathroom, but without many of the obvious drawbacks. For example, there is no toilet bowl to clean. Meanwhile, the lack of toilet bowl means that the indignity that might be suffered from splashback onto one’s privates, especially after a particularly catastrophic gastrointestinal experience, go by the wayside.
Instead, your deposit is released like an eager parachutist, albeit one without a chute. Still, the satisfying sound of the impact, often some 10 feet or more below ground, is itself another credit to the outhouse, and one far more satisfying than the tired sound of pebbles in a pond.
There is also the issue of water conservation. Each of us uses hundreds of gallons of water every year to wash away our biological business, while an outhouse has no need of any water but that which you make of your own accord and deliver unto it. And how many of us have had to flush twice (three times?), dividing the package from its paper and making all the more plain the anxiety inducing inadequacy of the flush? And this is to say nothing—nothing—of using a guest’s bathroom, where, with never a plunger in sight, we live in fear of a faux poo that could leave us uninvited to the next soiree.
But perhaps the outhouse’s greatest gift of all is that most rare and prized human experience: solitude. And there is no more private a bathroom than one removed a safe distance from all potential unwanted intervention. At its best, the well-constructed and maintained outhouse is, for a brief moment in time, like the small second home you’ve always dreamed of, but can’t afford.
And so why not install one in your backyard? With just a shovel and some wood, you’re on your way. Consider it a vacation home, one whose limited VRBO revenue is made up for in its lack of mortgage financing.
In fact, I think I’m going to go take a vacation right now.
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