Definitions: Cone

This is from the Latin word "conus", meaning a wedge, or a peak, or basically anything unnecessarily pointy.

If you sleep on the ground then a cone can be a pine cone, a fir cone, a spruce cone, a twig, a stone, a shard of bark, a piece of glass, a rusty nail, teeth of a dead animal, or anything that keeps you from getting the rest you need, no matter how thick your sleeping pad is.

If you happen to sleep on unnoticed animal poo, well that stuff will not keep you awake the first night because it is so soft. (Mmmm, soft.) But you will find it the next day and just the thought of it will prevent you from sleeping for the next few nights. At least.

You get extra points if you manage to pack up in the morning without realizing that your new poo buddy is there, and then get the stuff smeared all over the inside of your pack and everything you carry there.

You get lifetime champion status points if you put your pack in some nice soft poo while setting up camp after sundown and then use your pack under your knees all night, and triple lifetime champion status bonus points if you do this while using a backpacking hammock, and manage to smear poo all over the inside of the hammock, the outside of your sleeping bag, your jammies, and of course have it all over your pack too.

Guess who did that once?

Yep.

We few, we grumpy few, we rumply-hat geezers say to you Effort or Eff it. No sniveling then.

Definitions: Bog Hole

(1) A bog hole is, of course, a typical bureaucratically-determined sleep feasibility site. Look for the telltale sign that says "Designated Camping Area". Prepare your bug defense perimeter. Accept the damp. Keep your official permit at the ready in case of a snap inspection.

(2) A bog hole is the preferred habitat of the plant known as bog myrtle, named after the famous and rugged (though some say mythical) female backpacker, Bog "BM" Myrtle, "The Honkin', Stompin', Stoopin', Poopin' Princess of the Backcountry", who had a soft spot for soft spots and also left liberally fertilized pocks scattered throughout each of the moist landscapes she traversed.

"BM" was the granddaughter of, and possibly gained some of her energy from, Josephene Myrtle Corbin, the Four-Legged Woman and noted dipygus dibrachius tetrapus, who was born in Lincoln County, Tennessee in 1868, and had two of everything from the waist down, including pairs of legs, but was otherwise pretty forgettable, though an intimidating square dancer in her day.

Not so for "BM". No. She was different in a different way.

"BM" had only the one pair of legs but she used them like nobody's business, though only outdoors. (She wasn't a great dancer.)

But she was big. And she was strong. She ate like a lumberjack, and possessed a fearsome speedy digestive system that kept her hopping at all hours.

Because of this physiological quirk she was unable ever to remain still and so managed to cover huge sections of trail in short order, setting several land speed records for foot travel during her short lifetime.

It could be that her unnatural hiking cadence did her in, or the toxic effects of the excess vitamins and minerals contained in her enormous lunches, or that, as is sometimes said, she was pursued one day too far into the wet, peaty, acidic reaches of a forb-infested quivering bog by pestilential clouds of savage biting midges, and was ultimately sucked deep down into the soft damp darkness, to expire there and at last find some peace.

No one knows, but to this day such landscapes are favored by bog myrtle ("sweetgale" or "myrica gale") a pleasantly-scented traditional enemy of midges and horseflies of all descriptions. Does that sound believable? (Say yes!)

(3) And finally, a bog hole is Town (any town), where zero days happen, where zero days form, collect, pile up, and spontaneously glomerate one to another, tending to mire and restrain you, the thru-hiker, from ever getting back on the trail and finishing anything, at all, ever, especially if there is ice cream. To go with your beer.

Proper Poo Paper Placement

According to me.

Step one: find a soft spot.

I've been places where personal paperwork has to be carried out. Mostly the rules aren't that strict, although you can argue that they should be, everywhere.

Step 2: Get a grip on the important stuff.

The most annoying place I've been was the Goat Rocks Wilderness in south-central Washington State. Backpacker magazine had a writeup about a particular location there a couple of years back. It drew millions.

Step 3: When done, assess the situation.

You may be familiar with the phenomenon — most of those people are awed. They're out there in the wilderness and all, and it's wild and no one has ever been there before so they're explorers too, and it's handy that there happens to be a trail exactly there, since it's totally unexplored. Wow! What a deal, and so close to Seattle, too. You can practically drive right right into the middle of this just-discovered wilderness.

Step 4: Prepare your paperwork.

So if you — wait, minor correction needed — when you need to drop your pants and do your stuff and clean up, it's OK to leave huge long loops of the telltale paper right out there on the ground like Lewis and Clark did. Because you're the first human ever to be there, and probably it will be centuries before another human finds out how to make the short drive from Seattle (or Tacoma, hey?) and mount an expedition out here.

Step 5: Begin poking.

Right. City people. Loops of TP and piles of unburied crap. We'll get to the glistening butt sausages later sometime. For now, here's a description of my TP technique.

Step 6: Push gently and firmly.

First, I use heavy-duty paper towels. I cut each sheet into four pieces. I carry those pieces in a quart-sized zip-lock bag.

Step 7: Continue, eh?

Paper towels are sturdy. These sheets don't break or tear, and resist raindrops a whole bunch better than "bathroom tissue". Especially if used with some smarts. Like first folding each quarter-sheet in half, using it carefully, then folding the partly-soiled sheet in half again. And, depending on what's happening that day, folding the result in half yet again. No matter what, you end up with one to four pieces of hefty paper, neatly folded. Did I say it's tough? Yes I did — this stuff is tough.

Step 8: Shove it as far as you can.

So then, use the tip of one trekking pole to group these tough little wads into a stack, each on top of the others. Since you picked your spot carefully, the ground is soft. In Western Washington you often have a foot or more (30 cm) of forest duff to push into. So push already. Your stack of used paper goes right into the ground, leaving only a small hole to mark the spot. Generally you can get the stuff down at least six inches (15 cm) even if the ground is tough or the forest duff contains lots of twigs and branches, but often you can go deep.

Step 9: Congratulate yourself on your depth.

When done, pull your trekking pole out and use the tip again, to close up the little hole you've got left (no wider than one of your fingers), and that's about it.

Right, you've left some manufactured human-stuff behind, but it won't escape. The wind won't take it. It can't give off odors because it's compressed and compacted almost back to the density of wood. It's out of sight and locked in tight. Come back to that spot later and you won't find it, exactly — "Hmmm, over by this tree, I think, but was it on this side or the other? Or maybe it's that tree over there..."

Any way, the job's done, neatly and completely. Your waste paper won't become part of someone else's vacation.

Now go convince everyone else to do you the same favor.

More.

Five Days Rocking With The Goats

Let's Talk About Holes

What do you know about holes? About the types of holes, hole site location, and, most importantly, proper use of holes?

In the backpacking world holes are small. We don't need big'uns. There's no need to spend half a day excavating a place to sleep, safe from shrapnel. Unless you're on an adventure tour that wandered.

No — not that kind of hole. Backpacking holes are small, often ad hoc.

in fact, a lot of significant holes are accidental, like postholes. There are even verbs for the process of suddenly and unexpectedly finding such a hole surrounding one of your hind legs:

Posthole: To hike in deep snow without snowshoes or skis, leaving large holes in the trail. Postholing is considered bad form and makes subsequent snowshoeing or skiing unpleasant and hazardous. (1)

Postholing: Hiking through deep snow that is not frozen solidly enough to support your weight and allows your leg to drive through the crust as if you've stepped into a hole, doing really nasty things to your knees and shins. (2)

Inconvenient, but it happens.

If you don't like this experience, then...

• Don't go backpacking.
• Do your backpacking somewhere else.
• Wait until the snow is gone.
• Wear snowshoes.
• Have someone carry you.

But there's more to it. Some post holes are not accidental. You make them yourself, on purpose, to do business in.

And don't be coy — you know what business we're talking about — the kind of thing no Pope will ever discuss on television.

For instance...

• If your timing is off, then you finish digging after your business meeting has concluded. Which is pointless, don't you think? But we'll give you credit for completing your little project anyway. You have created a post-business-hole, or a posthole, however useless, to accompany your mess.
• If your technique is off and the architecture of the resulting hole is wrong, then the hole you dig will resemble what you dig to put a post in — narrow, deep, and hard to hit. No kitty would be so stupid, so cat hole ceases to be a reasonable term. Let's stick with posthole and just call you inept.
• Following up on the first definition, but requiring the gentle touch of professional intervention, postholing is what Poo-Crues do. If you dig the wrong style of hole and miss, dig one too late, or don't dig a hole at all, the result is the same. After that, a Poo-Crue has to helicopter in to clean up after you, but unlike private clubs, nary a national park nor forest can afford this level of involvement so step lightly when traipsing off-trail in public areas.
• If you are caught being naughty and handed a sentence for poor hiking technique, such as having your laces untied, for not hanging your food properly, for bathing or washing dishes directly in a stream, and so on, such as misuse of a hole in the ground, then you might spend the rest of your summer postholing. And this is the least fun kind, because you'll be digging holes for posts. And on top of each post will go a warning sign saying not to do the thing that you've been doing. This is post-hole justice, and it's even less fun than it sounds, but makes for some fun photos.

That about covers it, then.

So long for now.

Sasquatch Poo Found Interesting In Texas

Maybe the dog did it.

Dr Moira Ketchup, Chair of the Department of Hospitality Science and Genetics at T-Bone University in Lizard, Texas, and author of several books including "Non-Intelligent Design: Just do it!", has today emitted a press release on her 5-year long DNA study of an odd-looking lump discovered one summer day in June, 2007.

Our study has utilized next generation sequencing to obtain 3 whole nuclear genomes from samples that my dog found while playing in the field out back. I'm guessing Sasquatch for sure.

The genome sequencing shows that Sasquatch mitochondrial DNA is mostly identical to modern Homo sapiens, plus something very close to dog hair.

But Sasquatch nuclear DNA represents a novel, unknown hominid thing related to Homo sapiens and other monkey-like species, sort of like my inlaws but somewhat cruder.

This indicates that a previously unknown hominid may still be on the loose, at least in Texas, and might like playing with dogs. We still don't know for sure.

Our best guess (soon to be made into a movie by the guy down the street who knows video) is that the DNA belongs to a true North American Sasquatch.

This would be a hybrid resulting from immigrant Sasquatch males fooling around with female Homo sapiens, possibly some of the ones living in the trailer park across the street from me.

Besides the lump of unknown stuff her dog brought home, there were also several curious artifacts: some rusty buckles, two dirty, worn-out socks, discarded ramen noodle wrappers, and what is most surprising, a fire ring containing ash and charred sticks.

We don't see many people around here, so it couldn't just be some backpackers camped out behind the fence. From what I know backpackers aren't that highly evolved and don't have the use of fire, let alone knowing how to cook ramen, so the material has to have been deposited by Sasquatch.

You might not believe this, but Sasquatch even uses toilet paper. And yes, we have definitive proof resting in the cold storage locker in the cafeteria.

Stay tuned, folks. This could be big.

More:

Melba Ketchum announces Bigfoot DNA results. Without the data.

DNA expert's view of the Ketchum Bigfoot DNA claim