GUIDINGlight by tim shuff S@#%-Put I D
How to s@#% in the
sea...and make a profit.
woke up after a dozen hours in the sack with a familiar sense of urgency. I know some folks who would have alerted their friends with some sort of a rude announcement about turtles’ heads or the like, but I just lumbered silently past Dave’s tent to the other side of the island. I had planned carefully, auguring this moment last night when I was stuffing myself with refried bean and ground soy burritos after a day of typical west coast rain in Desolation Sound. So when I’d spotted the fine flat dish of bark by our unloading site, I’d picked it up and stashed it in my vestibule for this moment.
on’t ever try this in fresh water, but a great way to dispose of human waste on the coast is
the shit-put, recommended by Peter McGee in Kayak Routes of the Pacific Northwest Coast. This is a good way to speed the breakdown of waste in the marine environment and avoid the contamina- tion of shellfish beds and beaches in popular pad- dling areas. McGee advises, “Find something such as a large, flat rock to serve as a platter to launch the feces into the water. Then do your business a comfortable distance from the water, take the rock to the water’s edge and throw it as far as you can into the ocean. It may not be pretty but it works.” It can also be surprisingly entertaining. Now I took the bark and admired it’s flat, slightly con- cave surface and football size. “Perfect,” I thought, smiling in the chill air of a February morning. The rocky point I’d cased out the day before, on the other side of the small island, provided a perfect launching point into the deep water of an open channel—the best possible disposal site on the heavily used Curme Islands—and the best view from a low squatting position one could possibly dream of.
Low clouds of a breezeless morning draped over the peaks of the sound, melding with the win- ter white amidst the trees high on the slopes of East Redonda Island and majestic Mount Denman
10 FALL2002
behind. The crowds of summer sailors were slum- bering back in the city or enacting their own morn- ing rituals over warm porcelain hundreds of kilo- meters away as I felt the bite of cold air and set- tled down to enjoy one of life’s great unsung pleasures before the deserted tableau of God’s own bathroom.
Then I gingerly carried the bark to the edge of the rocky promontory with the fruit of my labours painstakingly coiled atop it. I should note that such scatological intimacy is a great opportunity to assess the efficiency of the trip diet. I resolved then
and there that there are certain seeds I won’t both- er adding to my next batch of trail mix. I wound up for the launch and then paused.
There’s always a limit to how much energy you can safely apply at this moment. Too much force and the enterprise can go badly awry, and this is not something you ought to mess around with in a place where there are no hot showers. Not enough force, however, and the whole point of the shit-put is defeated. Pondering this delicate calculus – EUREKA! I had a moment of semi-divine inspira- tion.
Illustration by Scott Van de Sande
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