There are few places on earth that require as much poop-planning as the wilderness. A favorite vacation spot of mine is the Boundary Waters Wilderness Canoe Area (BWCA) in northern Minnesota. One would think that with nothing around and nothing to do but paddle a canoe and haul your stuff through the North Woods, the days would be carefree. Well, they pretty much are, until the rebellious colon strikes.

A little background before we get to the details. On the Canadian side of the border lies Quetico Provincial Park, where things are a little more remote than the BWCA, and actually a bit more poo-friendly. Simply dig a hole a ways back from the lake, cop a squat, and let one fly. Most people who've camped anywhere at all have probably been forced to do that drill at least once. But the US side is a bit different. In the interest of environmental conservation (I hope it's not for personal comfort, anyway), the US Forestry Service has installed 'designated camp sites.' Each site is equipped with a fire grate and a latrine. I don't know what image the word "latrine" conjures up in most people's minds, but these latrines are a dumper's worst nightmare. Positioned several hundred feet back from the lakes, they consist of army-green, fiberglass fixtures, each sitting about eighteen inches high. I've been told that when they were installed they were each equipped with a lid, but I've yet to find one with its lid intact. Instead, each of these circular bowls sits perched on a wood base, yawning open to expose the very depths of hell.

Imagine a primitive outhouse without the house. The area around the dumper is swarming with mosquitoes, biting flies (both horse and deer flies, if you're unlucky), and other flying pests. The high population of insects has, in turn, led to a disproportionate number of spiders. Spiders crawl on the base, webs obscure the 'business' portion, spiders hide under the lip of the seat just waiting for a pair of unsuspecting nuts to come swinging in their direction. And a few feet down lie soupy, rain soaked dregs -- the putrid remains of a thousand journey's meals. The first time I visited the BWCA I quickly realized that making a deposit in this most unholy of grails was going to take a bit of strategy.

How, then, did I plan for a dump under such adverse conditions? First, when our group had finished setting up the campsite, I did a more careful inspection of the latrine and removed all visible spiders and webs with a stick. Then I waited.

I'm a normally prolific pooper -- once before breakfast, once when I get to work, and usually once more before lunch. After lunch there's always one, sometimes two before dinner. Then immediately following dinner, there's the evening purge, possibly followed much later by a before-bedtime plop. It's not that any of these are particularly urgent or voluminous; it's just that when I eat (and other times, too), I feel the urge to go. If I have even the slightest urge to go, I don't wait. Why feel any amount of discomfort if there's a bathroom readily available?

The BWCA is a different matter, though. The discomfort of an impacted bowel is easily offset by the terror of hanging one's nads over spiderville. I decided to wait until I desperately needed to go, and then to do it as quickly as possible.

I discovered that haste in tossing a turd isn't usually a problem. For this I thank my outfitter. All I'd brought on the trip was my clothes, some booze, deodorant, and, of course, a lot of toilet paper. The outfitter had provided all the supplies, including meals. The food is actually quite good, although it does contain a lot of fat; but fat can be a very good thing when pooping in the woods.

The urge struck some time after dinner. I trotted off to drop a load. The first order of business was to ensure I brought some Deet. Mosquito bites on one's privates could make for some uncomfortable moments. Second, I wanted to minimize my time in the woods to the greatest extent, which meant being ready to wipe. To do this, I decided to wad up a bunch of toilet paper balls in advance. Given the mighty rumbling in my guts, I made at least twice as many as I would expect to use at home, and made them somewhat bigger than I was used to using. I worked on the wads as I walked through the woods, stuffing them in my pockets as I went. As I approach the bowl, I dropped my pants and underwear and squirted a little Deet on my ass.

At this point I was facing my nemesis. But I had a plan. A quick check for additional spiders and I would be ready to spin around, crouch over the bowl, and let fly the pent-up remains of a day and a half's meals.

Those of you that have dumped in foreign lands using the hole-in-the-floor style crappers are probably familiar with some of the hazards of dumping in a crouched position. On a high-fat diet, the spray of goo that shoots out of one's ass comes with both amazing force and surprising direction. I always imagined the spray as a hose, but such isn't the case. While the force behind the evacuation might be hose-like, the ass cheeks make the shape more like a vertical fan. In practical terms, this means that if you stand too close to the latrine, or aren't crouched enough, the back of the rim is defiled. Crouch too much or stand too far away, and the front of the rim -- or worse, your pants -- gets it. If I'm taking a one-week trip, I usually bring two pair of shorts and one pair of jeans (and underwear for every day). Shitting one's pants requires those pants be destroyed, which really cuts into the wardrobe.

Well, the first wilderness dump proved to be one of the trickiest of my life. It started out as a warm, firm mud-snake creeping from my backside. After a half-foot or so, the snake lost its form and the pace quickened, ending in a fizzing, shooting burst of spurting liquid. Keeping the mess directed into the pit required a quick, fast moonwalk-sort of maneuver away from the bowl. While my trajectory was fairly accurate and I avoided soiling my drawers, I did manage to mess up both the back and front of the rim. (Note: subsequent wilderness dumps were primarily a loose, homogeneous material with the consistency of watery mud, allowing for improved aim.)

Now I'd sort of expected things to go a little awry; the reason behind the multiple and redundant extra large wads of toilet paper should now be clear. First, there was the matter of fixing the mistakes on the rim of the bowl. More importantly, there was shit dripping from my tailbone down to my nuts. Despite the Deet treatment, flies were swarming my ass like yellow jackets on a honey pot. There was a lot of cleaning to do, and fast.

While the fatty diet helped in hastening the exit, it greatly hindered the cleaning of the mess. The first swipe with the paper was like wiping ice with Teflon. The paper frictionlessly smeared a river of liquid shit up my rear end, past my tailbone, and onto my lower back. It moved so quickly that I lost control of the paper and smeared my thumb with thick, stinky, yellow ooze. I wasted an entire piece of paper cleaning my thumb before I tried again. On the second swipe I decided to go down instead of up to get the goo off my back. It definitely worked on my back, but damn if I didn't get my thumb again on the reverse swipe. Now, mind you, my ass has sprayed more than its fair share of runny, raunchy liquid -- but these fatty stools really were a different breed. The greasy feces left my butt slimy to the point that I wondered if any amount of wiping would ever get things clean. I used all my pre-fashioned butt-wipes and had to make a few extra. In the end I did manage to get things tidied up, but at a price.

The toll was half a roll of toilet paper and four or five mosquito bites on my backside. It doesn't sound like much, but if my wiping didn't get more efficient, the next few days would require a lot of leaves. My nuts, fortunately, were not attacked by spiders. More importantly, I had learned some valuable lessons about shitting in the woods. The only question that remained: where do I wash my hands?

-- Splatterbuns