Dung Intended

There is a such a huge influx these days of people who seek the freedom of travel and life on the road and as I myself career around from place to place, it has become apparent that a discussion of some practical issues may be in order. Let’s start with the basics. Yep. Let’s talk about poop and what to do with our feculent deposits when living in a small vehicle.

If you are living or camping in a car or SUV, chances are you don’t have a toilet that allows you to store your waste and dispose of it at a dump station. Pee can be relatively easy to dispose of – but still requires awareness and discretion (please people, don't dump your pee in a parking lot). Poop, however, is an entirely different matter. Basically, it comes down to where you are going to be doing your business.

For those who travel to dispersed areas in national forests, etc. where there is no toilet, historically the best bet has been to dig a cathole. It’s a good idea to carry a shovel or hand trowel when you travel and it will come in handy if you need to discard out in nature. Some national forests and other campgrounds have rules regulating the use of catholes: some require it yet there is also an increase in places that no longer allow it (it’s become a pooping free for all out there folks). Be familiar with any regulations before setting out.

On digging a cathole from the National Park Service (paraphrased): To dig a cathole, find a spot that is at least 200 feet (about 80 human paces) from a water source or a trail – preferably a place others won’t stumble across easily. Use your shovel to dig a hole 6” – 8” deep and 4” – 6” in diameter. After you make your deposit, stir it with a stick to help it decompose faster and cover the hole with dirt and leaves or rocks in order to hide the spot. Remember to always carry out your toilet paper. My preference is to use my collapsible toilet and then empty it into the cathole. An additional aid to decomposition can be had by spreading dry ash on the waste. An alternative to a cathole when camping in the wilderness is to use a special waste disposal bag commonly called a WAG bag. These are puncture proof bags which according to the manufacturer's description “traps, deodorizes and breaks down waste”. The manufacturer also claims these are safe to dispose of in a trash receptacle. These bags include a gel which helps the waste to decompose. Many people stay in established campgrounds, Cracker Barrel or truck stop parking lots, or find places that allow(ish) public overnight parking. If this is the case, always use a bathroom if it is available to you. We may not want to climb out in the morning and go into a public restroom, but truly, when nature calls, try to do everything you can to avoid having to dispose of your waste later.

If for some reason you are stuck with having to go number two in your vehicle, make sure you have some bags (or a container or both - coffee cans lined with a bag are one idea) on hand that are biodegradable and odor reducing for storage. You can also use the WAG bag mentioned above. You will need some sort of toilet – I use this collapsible version which stores under my driver’s seat (as seen in photo). The tricky part will be finding a place to dispose of your donation. Do NOT throw your poop in the garbage – any garbage – if it can be helped. There may be local or state ordinances against doing so. If you can, get to a public restroom and dispose of it in a toilet, but do not dispose of your bag in the toilet, including porta-potties. Find a way to wrap the bag and dispose of it separately in a garbage can. You may also be able to find a garbage designated for dog poo. If you must dispose of your waste in a regular garbage, use some sort of decomposing agent and make sure it is wrapped in a puncture resistant bag. Some folks choose to use ash, kitty litter, wood chips, sawdust and any number of other things to help control the odor and to make the bag safe for disposal. It is commonly assumed that poop can go in the garbage if properly bagged, much like diapers. However, diapers do a lot to control and seal in moisture and spillage. Imagine the items people throw into garbage cans at gas stations – things that may contain sharp edges which could poke a hole in your poop disposal plan. Ew! for the person who has to take out the trash. Ew! and extra ew as some pretty harmful bacteria could then be released, making the world a little less pleasant, not to mention less healthy, for us all. Be overly cautious when choosing to chuck your leavings in the garbage. This lifestyle certainly has its ins and outs. Even a weekend camping trip takes some forethought and planning. But remember, it’s especially important that it’s what we do with the outs that can make an impact on our environment, public health, and conscience. Hey – let’s start a movement!

****While I did not write this article to promote my Amazon Affiliate account, I do want to provide links to the products I use and recommend. Please note that I receive a small commission if items are purchased through these links. Disclaimer – I have not used the WAG bags.

TRIPTIPS Portable Folding Toilet 

This toilet collapses and fits right under the driver's seat when slid in from behind. I LOVE it! Have used it on the road and have plenty of space inside my vehicle to set it up and use. Doubles as footstool and recycle bin.

AWOKEN Unisex Urinal

Yes, people, I pee in my car at least three times a day/night. Combined with a plastic container for storage, this is perfect for me. And - no accidents yet!

Flambeau Outdoors Lil' Brute Fishing Tackle and Gear Box, Blue 

Perfect size for storing my urinal.  I actually have two.

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Check out Gear I Love for links to products I use and honest reviews.

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Phil

I first saw Phil at the corner of Buffalo’s Bailey Avenue and Broadway Street, an intersection nostalgic for prosperity. This corner, a convergence of neighborhood and forgotten industry, dusty with decades of historical poverty, has become a pocket ripe for panhandling and all sundry of shenanigans.

Phil’s hair stuck out in a wiry halo of gesticulation as he darted between the lanes of traffic. His smile beamed and glowed down into the windows of passers-by as they counted the red light seconds of his intrusion, most rolling their windows tight, a few making offerings in response to his undeniable charisma and impish charm. I was headed in the opposite direction, so went on my way, but the thought of him stayed. As I shopped for Christmas delights, my mind turned again and again to this fearless urchin and all he might be doing without.

Hours later, headed back to my daughter’s apartment, I returned to the intersection and there he was still! Now, he was on the opposite side from me again but this time I applied just the right amount of danger to the situation and swung a u-turn across four lanes of traffic. Pulling up alongside a gated auto shop, I caught his eye and waved a ten. He was by my side in no time, smiling away, thanking me profusely, and poking his gaze into my SUV. His eye caught on a blanket in the passenger seat.

“Got anything else? Food? I’m cold out here,” he hugged his arms and scoped my mobile mansion, so chock-a-block full of life-sustaining treasures. I handed him the blanket with a smile and again he glowed at me. “I’m Phil,” he said.

“Good-bye Phil,” I said and watched him skip away across Bailey Avenue, my blanket around his shoulders like an extra large fuzzy scarf, my heart now in his hands. Oh, Phil.

The rest of that late afternoon I spent researching ways to serve Buffalo’s homeless population. Were there any holiday food programs at which I could volunteer? Was there a way to take this new-found love of Phil out on the road and help others like him? For days after, every time I went into a store I would think – what does Phil need? Could he use these gloves? This hat? Alas, I did not see Phil again, but he stayed with me in countless, heart wrenching ways.

*****

This past year, my daughter’s apartment has been a haven for me. She has opened her home to me for visits and as a place to get off the road for a bit. Most recently she took me in when I needed gallbladder surgery. Her apartment is in the Lovejoy district of Buffalo, a gritty criss-cross of streets once dedicated to Polish immigrants. While still staunchly protective of its “own”, it is now also home to porch thieves, tweakers, and lazy opportunists. For all my daughter's generosity, I do my best to show my gratitude – mainly, you know, with money.

One evening she was getting ready to meet some friends for dinner and I reached for my wallet, only to remember about Phil.

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry I don’t have any cash. I gave my last ten to Phil,” thinking myself funny and fully expecting her to ask who Phil was.

I don’t get the sharp turn of my daughter’s full attention often, but that brought her to a standstill, her mouth agape and her voice an octave above normal.

“You gave money to Bicycle Phil?”

My heart turned over inside itself and my mind, oh my story-spinning mind saw what a fabrication it had made. It took me a beat or two to ask some questions and confirm, that yes, I had given my money to one of the city’s most well-known pan-handlers.

“Everybody knows Bicycle Phil,” she said.

Sigh.

*****

Flash a few days forward to Christmas Eve with my sister’s family. At some point, the conversational space opened and I began to tell the story of Phil, along with my daughter's response. Before I got too far, my nephew’s knowing look told me – yes, he too knew Bicycle Phil.

“But, I didn’t see him with a bicycle,” I said.

“Oh, I’ve seen him panhandling with a bicycle with no tires,” my nephew’s comment got a laugh from us all.

Oh, Phil.

*****

As I write this blog, I stopped to search a bit for an image online of the intersection where I met Phil. Not kidding – the second hit was a Reddit thread “We all know Phil right? Broadway and Bailey?”

The jig was up - my special moment with an unknown person in need was now a city-wide phenomena. What had changed?

*****

A year ago as I headed out on my grand, nomadic adventure, my meditation teacher said something that has really stayed with me – “Watch your mind.” Indeed. What a story I had spun, a longing my mind had created, and even a bit of an attachment to the flood of joy and emotion I had felt in that brief encounter with Phil. Without any information at all, my mind with all its pre-programmed perceptions, had written the story of Phil with me as a lead character.

So, Phil, I have to thank you. Thank you for letting me practice generosity. And thank you, even more so, for leading me to the sharp clarity of recognition that comes when we see our perceptions for what they are. Because, in that moment there was no story - just a spark of love and the truth of inter-connection – on the corner of Bailey and Broadway.

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The Accidental Penis

It was 9:18 a.m. on Thursday morning, October 8, 2020, when the call came in. I had taken a morning break from work, and the ring jarred me as I rested on the couch. Back in those days, I was working at least 12 hours a day as librarian, tech guru, and teacher. We were all juggling an exponential pandemic-induced workload. While most of my colleagues had gone back to in-person work the month prior, for me, COVID had performed its fearsome magic and I remained working from home, psychologically unable to disrupt my isolation.

“Hi Mary, ____ here,” my principal’s voice had the immediate effect of straightening my spine, somehow alerting my skeletal and nervous system as to what was to come. “This is serious.” He waited a beat. “Can you tell me about a recent art assignment you gave to your 8th grade class?”

As a K-12 school librarian, I had worked for the past 16 years in the same school district and had mostly taught within my subject area. This year, however, I had agreed to take on teaching a section of 8th grade art - a subject I enjoyed but of which I had no substantial knowledge. My mind scrambled to recall which assignment could be in question.

My principal gave me the artist’s name and I raced up the narrow staircase of my home, rushing to boot my laptop as he briefly described the piece of art. As he spoke about the work, my mind filled in the image and I couldn’t see what could possibly be the issue.

We had been studying post-1960 art and one of the artists I had selected was Keith Haring - a relevant and engaging painter whose work had emerged, in large part, as a response to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Haring ultimately died of AIDS and his work is still recognizable today as both emblematic and consequential. All of this I learned on the fly as I created a brand-new-to-me curriculum. I clearly remember one particular Sunday I spent developing lesson after lesson for this new class – hours of looking at artwork from dozens of artists with whom I was unfamiliar. For Haring, I had chosen a painting that had two genderless stick figures kneeling and holding a heart in the background and a drawing of Mickey Mouse in the foreground, holding his tail.

When my computer finally loaded up the assignment, I know my principal could hear my genuine breath of shock as the veil of illusion was lifted and I saw what the painting really was.

Indeed, Mickey was not holding his tail.

As if this hadn’t been enough, the four minute video of Haring’s work I had assigned (one of those brief showcases that breezes through a hundred or more images in a very short time) included at least one additional inappropriate piece of art I hadn’t noticed.

UGH!

As a teacher in 2020 America, one does not make this mistake without repercussive fallout. Whatever the particulars are of who threw the gauntlet and how, I can only say this – my administration was supportive of me and, although policies and procedures were followed, I absolutely still had a job. However, the attempted actions taken by those involved – of which I have tried and will continue to try to understand with compassion - effectively dismantled a nearly 30 year long career in public service and caused a long and painful descent into some very unexpected psychological breakage. Working with my doctor, it became apparent that I needed the remainder of the school year to repair and recover and was definitely not capable of returning to school. Luckily, I had accrued almost exactly enough sick time to see me through.

Have you ever thought about whether if you went crazy, you would know it? Or would you be too crazy for that particular awareness to activate? Both were true for me. My actions in the months that followed were palpably nuts, although I didn’t really see it that way until seen through the lens that only a daughter can provide. Although I lived in a different town from where I worked, family members from the class in question lived very nearby. I convinced myself that everyone, everyone, on my street and in my neighborhood – hell in the city…the state? thought I was a pedophile. One of my greatest joys in life was to walk for an hour or more each day, but now I couldn’t leave my house. I kept my curtains drawn and if I did leave, I disguised myself with layers and hats and sunglasses, hunching down the street. I unfriended almost anyone ever associated with my job. I stopped being friendly with the kids on my street. I became convinced that I was being watched, that my computer and phone were being monitored, and that there was a strong possibility I’d be arrested. My world and my perception of my place in it had simply vanished – no ground, no purpose, no reputation – it had all come and it had all dissolved…just like that. In it’s place? An arsenal of fear, pain, and grief…and a tendril of relief.

By May, I knew I couldn’t return to my job. And although some months later I was asked to apply for a regional librarian position and did give it a go, three months in I knew the classroom and indeed schools of any ilk, were no longer for me. The fearless fortitude required to work with children and their parents was no longer in my wheelhouse.

Within the next year and a half I began practicing the dharma, sold my home, retrofitted my RAV4 into a tiny home, left my pension at 28.5 years, and hit the road.

I think back now on how much building my library program had meant to me and how in so many ways I thought it had defined me. The year before COVID I had started a robotics club and taken a group of 4th – 8th graders to an international competition. I was so very proud of reaching these kids – many of whom never joined anything, who struggled to find their own “place” in school. Now, describing my pride, I understand more than ever how impermanent these things we grasp onto are.

For today, my home is on the edge of a forested stream on a land blessed and made holy by the practice and teachings of people who work to understand the illusory nature of things. I am in training to develop compassion for all other beings and to try and feel how they might feel in any given situation. I spend my days in service and meditation, reading and reflection. But, most especially, I am on the path to try and see things how they really are.

Because, you know…apparently it’s pretty easy for me to get things mixed up.

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Pictured above: Me on a walk, spring 2021 when I finally started to visit my favorite neighborhood trail again.