Everybody poops.
I think it’s time for the poop talk. For not potty training a child, I have used that phrase all too much in my life as an outdoor educator. I drive Hailee nuts with my “nature nuggets” on the way up a hike, but they are more welcomed on the way down. She gives me some free rein with this blog, so I figured an issue we have seen rising warrants this months blog post to be a nature nugget.
Where do you poop? How do you shower? What happens when you run out of water? Questions we hear quite a bit from friends and family in awe of the life we have chosen. Often paired with perplexed looks or excited smiles; living on the road is quite a romanticized notion.
But seriously, how to you go to the bathroom? I think that’s an important question that leads to a bigger topic in the growing world of off grid living and adventure tourism; Leave No Trace. National Forests and Parks don’t do the best job at informing visitors about the importance of Leave No Trace. So, what is it?
Leave No Trace is a set of guidelines and principles to use to best manage yourself and your groups impact in the outdoors. While these are best practices for exploring in nature, they are great to live by in our everyday lives too. There are 7 of them (with hand motions to help folks remember them but I won’t geek out here too much) and I am going to break them down for you:
Plan Ahead and Prepare
Seems obvious right? But most people brush over this step (present company included at times) in the depth that it should be taken. Prior experience and lack of experience can often make someone feel confident in their abilities or comfortable with only downloading All Trails and calling it good. But there is so much more to go into planning for your day outside and preparing.
Tell someone where you are going or leave a note on your car of your leaving time, goal for the day and expected return time.
Personally, I also like to leave a “panic time”. Things happen that can slow you down or maybe there’s an epic sunset and you made a last minute plan to stay and watch. So I will often tell Hailee what time I plan to be down but also what time she should start to worry if she doesn’t hear from me.
Make sure you pack the 10 essentials for hiking. Those include:
A map/compass in addition to our smart phones or a navigation device.
Food to keep you energized throughout the day. Nuts, cheese, chocolates, bars or fruits are great choices for high activity days.
Hydration and electrolytes will keep you going. It’s important to not just have one or the other but both. Some sort of filtration system to get you purified water. But step 1 can also help if you are planning a route that you know has fresh water access.
First Aid Kit will help prevent a bad situation from turning into a worse situation. Having bandaids, splints/swaths, antibiotic ointments, gauze and a bandage are some basic needs in a personal kit. Tampons are a personal essential in my kit to help a deep cut.
An actual flashlight or headlamp WITH spare batteries. A phone doesn’t count, you need to conserve your phones battery by not using the phones horrible flashlight app. The amount of people I have seen that have skipped this step using their phone and potentially creating a worse situation for themselves is way too many.
Multiple clothing layers. Having a water proof layer and an insulating layer will help with any potential unintended plan changes or weather.
Some sort of fire starting ability. I usually leave a lighter and waterproof matches in my first aid kit.
A repair kit is great to have. It doesn’t always need to be extensive but can change based on the season, activity or duration of your trip. But duck tape wrapped around a pencil (which is good for note taking in a first aid kit) or your hiking pole is likely a good bare minimum.
Sun protection. Have a hat and/or sunglasses. This can help you from the dangerous UV rays that increase as you go up in elevation but especially in the winter time from the reflection off the snow.
Lastly, a small packable shelter can be a life saver should you be lost or hurt and need to hunker down. The company SOL makes very small blankets that can double as an emergency sleeping bag or shelter.
2. Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces
This one can also be called “minimize our impact” because I know many hikers or hunters that bushwhack through the woods with proper planning. But 9 times out of 10 we are hiking on established trails and camping at established sites. If everyone chose to shortcut an established hiking trail or camp anywhere they want without consideration, the impacts on native plants can effectively clear cut an area within a couple seasons. We see this a lot at climbing areas around the base of cliffs eroding from heavy traffic.
3. Dispose of Waste Properly
The poop talk has arrived. For a lot of these wooded environments If there are no toilets and nature calls, dig a hole. It needs to be 6-8inches deep into the ground so that when you bury it nature can do its thing and decompose your human waste. There are great trowels that REI sells that have measurements on them to dig the right hole. But never, and I mean never touch the trowel to your waste. That’s rule number one of pooping outside. Other environments might call for you to use a wag bag such as the desert and glaciers. These bags are designed to absorb the smell and help you pack out waste to the nearest trash.
Dog owners: this parts for you. Bring a trowel on your hikes with your furry friends and bury their poop too if you’re not going to walk with a bag all day. Dog waste is a growing issue on our trail systems.
Make sure to leave areas nicer than when you arrived. We often roll into campsites where there are tons of trash and cans. We fill a trash bag and take it with us when we leave. That’s a good rule of thumb.
4. Leave What You Find
There are a lot of cool things in nature. Some that may incline us to bring them home. Try to resist the urge and take a photo instead. There is the cliche saying, “take only pictures, leave only footprints” and in this case, it’s true. If everyone took something from the places we visit outside, that’s a whole lot of taking and not a whole lot of giving.
5. Fire Safety
When is it not fun to have a fire outside? If there’s a fire ban or if you’re leaving ashes and embers and destroying the environment in the name of fire.
They make fire retardant mats that can be great for little personal fires. Or even now the profitable and collapsable fire rings. You should be making yourself a ring of safety with rocks otherwise. You have to make sure that you drown out and suffocate the fire completely when you’re all done. If you are in an area that you built the fire ring; it and bury your ashes, just like our poop to help the dirt and environment do its thing.
6. Respect Wildlife
Almost every summer, Yellowstone has videos floating around of visitors getting way too close or even getting hurt by wildlife. This is their world, we are just visiting it. While it is incredible to see a moose in its natural element, I surely don’t want to be there when they don’t want me in there natural element any longer. Keep at least 100 yards between you and wildlife to ensure safe viewing and respecting their space as living beings trying to survive.
7. Respect Other Visitors
This one is tough for folks. We all have our own opinions and process when we are recreating outside. Some people hike with music and some folks blare generators all night when they are in their RVs. But there are ways to accommodate and respect everyone’s process.
You like music while you hike? Boom. Headphones. Crazy invention that helps you enjoy music to yourself. You need a generator running all night? Most campgrounds have a “quiet hour” but when you’re off grid on that BLM land there aren’t any rules like that. So enact your own to be a respectful neighbor if you’re in a busy area. Or better yet, figure out a solar set up which is the way of the future. I have always figured in areas where there aren’t strict guidelines for quiet hours, consider the 6 hour limit. From midnight to 6am try to respect other neighbors and limit your generator or your group fire dances and chanting.
If you made it this far, that’s great. And it would be great for you to share this with your outdoor friends and fellow travelers. These principles will help the masses not destroy the places we love. I don’t think most people just don’t care, I think they just don’t know and haven’t considered the effects of human impact.
With adventure tourism growing, outdoor education needs to grow with it so people can continue enjoying these wild places. These aren’t just for the hikers or campers. These are also for the dog walkers, van lifers and just the everyday person that enjoys taking a walk outside.
The 7 Principles of Leave No Trace are just a basic guideline on how to not be an ***hole to nature and other people. So take it for what it is and do your best when traveling to abide by them. And more importantly, enjoy the world around you.
Take the Slow Days for the Go Days.
-Luke