If you have ever been to a national park for camping and have witnessed the outhouse-style toilets, you will be familiar with the setup for this story. My friends and I were camping at just such a park, enjoying nature and natural bowel movements. For gentlemen (and I use the term lightly), the world is a urinal. But for #2, we prefer some sort of facility.

In this case, our facility was a two-holer built over a massive concrete cistern. And if you looked down either hole, your eyes were met with a beautiful view of Lake Shit. That's right, thousands of gallons of raw sewage: a mixture of liquids and (gulp) solids. The smell was... well, let's just say the smell was strong.

Once you get used to it, though, it becomes a natural part of your daily routine. The sights and smells sometimes even help your system to begin percolating and performing.

Now on to the main event. My friend had decided it was time for his daily visit to sensory obliteration. He grabbed a book and headed for Lake Shit. He pulled his Adidas shorts down and assumed the position for launch. After completing his pipe draining he stood, cleaned, and pulled up his shorts.

Unfortunately his wallet was in the back pocket of his shorts; and when he jerked his waistband, out went the wallet directly into the black hole of excrement.

He heard something splash and realized what happened.

He turned to look down the hole and spotted his driver's license picture looking up at him, floating like a lily pad in Lake Shit.

He returned to the campsite and tried to enlist help from me. I decided that his plight was worth further investigation. I helped him grab anything that might help in the retrieval of his wallet.

When we returned to the scene of the crime, the wallet was now beginning to sink as the contents started to soak up the surrounding effluent. I asked if he would consider reaching headfirst into the abyss, with me holding his ankles; he declined that idea. (Damn.) Finally, we decided to use a garden rake to fish around the lake, to move some logjams out of the way, and to carefully lift out the wallet.

When we finally got it out, no one wanted to touch it.

The stench was overpowering. My friend threw the wallet in a bag and returned to the campsite, where it became necessary to wash each ID and each bank note. For drying, we created a makeshift clothesline with all the contents of his wallet hanging in a row. It was quite a sight; and it made for a camping trip I won't ever forget.