Where Do The Girls Go Pee When They’re Out in the Backcountry?
Or … is Shewee the solution?
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The marvelous Debra Groves Harman, MEd has written so eloquently about her experiences on the Camino de Santiago — she’s really activated my fascination with this wonderful trail.
She recently wrote about something a little less lofty, which was “what do you do when you’re out in the wilderness and you have to … go … peeeeeeeeeeeeee ….”
Deb mentioned good advice from a smart handkerchief-using trailside urinator, as well as her attempts to use the Shewee, a device that turns the female anatomy into a plastic duplicate of the Peehee. Peewee (oh wow, guys aren’t gonna like that are they?). The Shewee lets women, uh, put this cup thing down there and shoot urine out through a tube.
So, hiking is my official “hobby.” I was informed second-hand that a local gym owner said I can’t lead ladies on wilderness walks in local preserves because I “need to be certified.”
This authority’s instructions aside, I think I could be, like Jeepy, “trail-certified” through a lot of this stuff. Through hard experience, I learned that I shouldn’t hike in potentially dangerous wilderness areas alone or I’d end up like poor Ellen Chung, Jonathan Gerrish, and their baby and dog.
I was always out somewhere in the backcountry when I was growing up. None of my friends was quite as interested as I was in wandering through the wilderness. As a kid, I hiked at least 2–3 days a week with my dog Freckles. We wandered through the foothills of the San Bernardino mountains and blazed trails in the Santa Ana riverbed.
My whole family has always suffered from “TB” (aka ‘tiny bladder’) so this is a common concern among all of us. And if you’re in the backcountry more than a few hours and a responsible person, you are going to need to bring a couple of ziplock baggies for your … er … #2. You need to do #2 in a bag and pack it out. Pack it in, pack it out, do not s**t in the wilderness, the animals don’t like it.
