“I am ruler of this fair land. I am master of all I survey. I am--hey, is that a squirrel?”

Every guy you know has, at some point in his life, peed against the side of a building or tree. Some of the guys you know are doing it right now. And it’s easy; the male anatomy is well-suited to directing the flow away from you and onto brick walls or slow-moving friends. But before this trip I don’t think I’d shat in the woods in my entire life.

Tony told me that when he goes camping, his bowels typically go into ‘Away’ mode and he lacks the urge to go. I hoped the same thing would happen to me, but within an hour of choosing our campsite, my bowels started sending me urgent internal e-mails.


To: Rain@Rain.com
From: Downhere@colon.org
Subject: OPEN IMMEDIATELY


At first I thought it was spam and deleted it, but after the third one came in, I grabbed the orange shovel and roll of toilet paper. “Well, how bad could it be?” I thought. “People have been shitting in the woods for thousands of years, right?”

The first thing is, you’ve gotta pick your spot. I walked through the woods for what I felt was a good amount of distance, but when I turned around, I could still clearly see the campsite and my friends in their brightly-colored clothes. I looked down at my own shirt, which was blue.

I ventured deeper into the woods until I couldn’t see them anymore. It occurred to me that I might be very close to someone else’s campsite, but I squinted in each direction and couldn’t see anything.

After dropping trou, I looked around at the ground. What are you supposed to do? Should you shit by a tree or away from one? Why do guys piss on trees anyway? I compromised and picked a spot that was merely near a tree.

Then I hit a snag, in the form of physical logistics. How shall I say this. If you move next to your desk and squat right now, you’ll see that the part of your body that discharges matter is directly over where your pants would be around your ankles. And while guys are practiced at aiming things in the front, the back is more of a plug-and-play situation. (Or unplug-and-play. Well, I don’t have time to come up with a better analogy.)

No matter how I positioned myself, I couldn’t get the bomb bay doors far enough from the non-target of my pants. I thought about taking the pants off entirely, but was like “What if I have to run?” You know, bears and stuff. And getting eaten by a bear must be even worse if you’re half-naked.

Unable to devise a more dignified solution, I had to shuffle my feet closer to a tree, then grab it with both hands and lean backwards while squatting. Which made it look like I was fucking water-skiing. When I realized that I started to laugh out loud, which must have looked bizarre. If my life was a cable sitcom there’d be a pack of unseen campers sitting around a fire ten feet away from me, going “Hey, check out the Chinese guy” and there I’d be, hanging onto a tree, guffawing and defecating at the same time.

During the initial pitching of tents, Julie and I had more of a supervisory role.

Tony assures me you cannot sleep in a tent when it’s like this.

Back at the campsite, while unpacking the gear, Jiae came across a newspaper. “Who the hell brought The New York Times?” she asked.

“I did,” said Tony.

“It’s for starting the fire,” I explained, grateful that I knew something about being outdoors. Last year on an outing I’d learned how to start fires. It’s a good skill to know, useful for outdoor survival and insurance fraud.

“Well, I want to read it before we burn it,” she said, and I did too.

After unpacking everything it was Miller Time. Except we forgot to bring the Miller. Or any kind of beer. John pushed some large rocks into the approximate shape of a beach chair and I stretched out with the Metro Section.

Here I am sitting in the woods, reading some article about how the new thing among Manhattan’s super-rich is to put a swimming pool in their apartment, which has an average up-front cost of $500,000. The annual heating bill is $25,000.

When I realized what I was doing I put the paper down, stood up, then Tony and I started the fire. The Metro Section came in handy.

This fire brought to you by The New York Times.

Everyone had centralized the chow, bags upon bags, and left it in a pile by a tree. And now I knew why everyone’s bags were so goddamn heavy--Julie, who handled the food shopping, had gone fucking nuts in terms of bulk. We had enough here to feed an Iraqi insurrection.

Julie sat next to the tree in front of a large, flat rock which she’d covered in plastic and was using as a prep surface for the chow. I couldn’t believe how much of it there was.

Not that I was complaining, especially when the steaks came off the fire. Julie and Sing had rubbed them down with garlic and they were delicious, especially after that hike.

There is nothing better than eating a steak cooked over an open fire.
Unless you’re rich. If you’re rich, I’d imagine there’s a good deal that’s better.

After we polished the steaks we were almost full, but there was still a giant pot full of lentils, and grilled corn, and grilled chicken, and pita bread and cold cuts and cheese. This is what happens when you go camping with a gourmand. I’m surprised she didn’t provide crème brulee for dessert.

It got dark quickly, and after eating I was super-tired. I haven’t been sleeping well lately, not like I ever do, and the night before I’d gotten maybe ninety minutes. I crawled into the tent at eight-something and was out like a light.

I awakened with a start, covered in sweat. The inside of the tent was extremely humid. I could hear Tony breathing next to me, though he’d had the decency to sleep head-to-toe so we could avoid any accidental homoerotic episodes brought on by ill-timed dreams of coveted females.

The humidity was pretty uncomfortable, so I hoped it was morning, time to get up, and that I’d got a restful eight hours of sleep. But when I fumbled for my bag and broke out the cell phone, I saw it was 12:25. At night.

My stomach started sending more e-mails. I tried to ignore them, but it was hopeless. I dug around for my flashlight and pulled my shoes on. Outside the tent, I located the orange shovel and the toilet paper. Everyone else was fast asleep in their tents; I could hear snoring all around.

Walking through the woods at night is friggin’ scary, even with a flashlight. You’ve got a ten-foot radius of light but everything outside that is pitch-black. Instead of the familiar noises of car alarms or drunken neighbors or honking horns, you hear the wind, and things rustling, and the occasional twig snapping. And even if it’s you snapping the twigs it’s still creepy.

After returning to the campsite I found myself exhausted but unsleepy--you know that feeling?--and I didn’t have anything to do. It wasn’t like I could log on to read a webpage or three, so I decided I’d get the fire going.

In five I had flames and the front page was history. I sat on a log, thought about a girl and tried to warm my hands near the fire. Every now and then I’d stare at the stars, so bright and vibrant they didn’t seem real to me. You’ll never see this in the city.

It was pitch, pitch black. The crackling of the fire drowned out any sounds of snoring, and I felt like I was the only person for miles around. I felt like this fire was the only light for miles around. It would die down every ten minutes or so, and I’d keep feeding it.

Like being alone, there’s something addictive about eyeballing a fire, and I stared into that damn thing like it was TV. I think it was about an hour before I crawled back into the tent.

The next morning I was awakened by voices, and I crawled out of the tent to see Tony, Sing, and the sun were all up.

The one alarm clock you can’t snooze.

It was 7-something a.m., and Julie was off in a glade doing yoga. She’s a yoga fanatic and I later found out she did a two-hour session that morning, having awakened at five-something. I snapped some pictures of her and she didn’t react.

This is Julie doing yoga. When she gets like this you can hit her with flaming sticks ‘n shit and she doesn’t even feel it.

When everyone was up we started making breakfast, and again I saw why our loads were so heavy. Two kinds of bacon, two kinds of sausages. All these things add up. They were, however, delicious.

There is nothing better than bacon cooked over an open fire.
Unless you’re rich, in which case oh, never mind.

Dawn of the Dog. (Not Tony, the canine. Can you see him?)

Afterwards I had to use the shovel another two times. Don’t know what my problem is.

Within hours we struck the tents, packed up all our garbage and buried the fire. With the packs on our backs, the site looked like we’d never been there.

Dawn of the Dog II: Day of the Dog.

Our loads were noticeably lighter now that we’d eaten (and I’d shat out) all the food we’d carried. But a four-mile hike is still a four-mile hike, and half of it was still uphill.

Tony and I managed some conversation on the trail.

“Now I know why it took people so long to advance out of the Dark Ages,” said Tony, laughing. “It took us fucking four hours to cook dinner!” (Not to mention we didn’t even have to catch it.) “Yesterday we basically got here, cooked, and went to sleep. Between gathering firewood, preparing and cooking the food, eating, and cleaning up afterwards, there’s no time to do anything.”

It’s true. Living out here, like this, it’s a different kind of hand-to-mouth living. There’s simply no time to do things like fax resumes or set up crystal meth laboratories or pursue careers in marketing. There would be no traffic snarls or co-signing leases or making out with girls in bars. No action movies, no trips on airplanes, no accidentally deleted voicemails. No free evening and weekend minutes.

Still, at the end of this trail sits a car I worked hard to afford, and even though I’m behind on the payments, I can still use it. And it will take me back to an apartment I’m struggling to pay rent on, which is my home base for the career I’m struggling to get off the ground, and that perfect girl I’m struggling to meet, and on and on. So I guess struggle is universal, it’s just a slim difference of amenities.

One thing I will say, though; when you’ve got a heavy physical load on your back, man, you are aware you are struggling. Pounds won’t let you forget it.

“So listen, yeah, I can’t feel my legs anymore.”

And soon we were back in the car.

Upwardly Mobil.