During high school, I was in the Cadets, which is basically a young people's military program. The Cadets involved lessons in drill, field craft, abseiling, navigation, rifle-range, and night-movement. To put all of these skills to use in an appropriate environment, we would go on two camps each year, one for three days and the other for five.

Main Camp, a five day excursion, was a fairly grueling experience. We would navigate around a state forest in platoons on little food, sleeping for a few hours at night and then undertaking different activities in the daytime.

One of these activities is abseiling. Since we had only a simulated climbing tower at school, this was really the only chance we got to use a real rockface. There was a division of the Cadet unit who spent the entire camp on top of a mountain throwing kids on ropes off.

The night before we were due to go off the edge, we feasted. In terms of feasting, this wasn't particularly large, but compared to what we had eaten previous to this, it was immense. The problem was, the food was shitty. We had proper army ration-packs, and these are just horrendous. There were a few good ones which you were glad if you got, but otherwise you were looking at eating basically processed mush.

As a higher rank than most in the unit, I could probably have requisitioned one of the good rat-packs for myself, but I didn't. Long story short, I ended up with a can of chicken and vegetable mush. Tasty.

After a night of eating heaps of that crap, and drinking a lot of coffee that morning, I was standing atop a cliff face looking out over the national park. Standing on the clifftop was exhilarating, gazing across miles and miles of dense bushland. But knowing I was about to surrender myself to gravity was not exactly adding to the serenity.

So over the edge I went. The jerking motion of the abseiling and the exertion it took to get back up the top took their toll, and by the second pass I really needed to go. But where? Certainly not on top of the cliff -- there were no latrines around, not even half-assed military ones. The answer was obvious: nature truly was calling.

After my third trip down the cliff, I took a detour on the path back to the top. That path would usually take around forty-five minutes to ascend, so I figured I had a window where I could conceivably run ahead to almost catch up with the person in front of me, then run into the bushes, do my thing, and be back on the road before I was in sight of the next man up.

I bolted into the bushes, knowing time was very limited. I went straight behind a tree and tied a bushman's handle -- a strap from a trunk made just long enough so you can hold onto it and lean back, eliminating the risk of landing your load on your pants.

I released, and a few days' tension flooded out. I could feel the forest around me clear of animals as they realized something far larger and more vicious was approaching.

I was standing on a steep hillside, and as I looked back I realized that the winding path actually loops around the mountain in a zig-zag, and I was only thirty yards from the section I had just climbed up before. Straight away I realised what this meant: the next person up would be walking by any second. With dismay I also noted that the massive log I had just dropped had landed badly, and was somehow rolling down the slope while maintaining its structural integrity.

Envisaging a snowball situation whereby an unsuspecting cadet would catch a legful of my excrement, I couldn't help but laugh. Thankfully, though, the log stopped rolling about ten yards short of the next road. Cleaning up and untying my handle, I climbed back up to the road. Carrying so much less weight, the climb was considerably easier.

What I wasn't expecting was a reception committee. There was half of my platoon, who had received a radio message to get to a point about ten clicks away. They had come down the conventional way and had seen me drop a log, laugh, and come back up. They were laughing with me rather than at me, although this may have been because I outranked them. A few of them suggested we christen the log and carry it as a baby because of its size.

In any case, it was worth it. I've been trying to get my hands on some more of that rat-pack stuff since, just to see if I can repeat the results. Maybe this time I'll just drop it down a steep road.

-- Tollstrup