OUR FIRST NIGHT ON THE TRAIL WAS A RUDE BAPTISM. WE SPENT THE day skinning up to above the treeline, a few of us pulling sleds packed with food and gear as well as wearing our heavy backpacks. The altitude was a killer, as was the weight we pulled. My muscles were jelly within minutes, my breath a high-pitched whistle. We were soon high up, and as darkness fell, a swirling snow complicated things as we set up our first camp, the Rockies looming around us. I wondered, in a woozy, hypoxic kind of way, how exactly I’d ended up there.
Before heading down to Florida to begin training as an instructor, I’d taken a few Outward Bound courses myself as a student. I’d briefly attended a fancy prep school for a second senior year of high school in the hopes of resuscitating my flatlining GPA and go to college. Once deposited in a boarding school at the tender age of eighteen, I smoked bales of marijuana, snuck booze into my room for parties, and confirmed every stereotype possible for an entitled white kid from New England. I got put on probation for “cruising,” what we called sneaking around at night outside the dorms. My defense—that hallucinogenic mushrooms are best enjoyed outdoors—fell on deaf administrative ears. It wasn’t long before I dropped out and showed up on my dad’s doorstep, unkempt and unenrolled. Eager to be rid of me, my father sent me off on a couple of Outward Bound courses. He enrolled me because he felt it would be an excellent way for me to develop independence and self-reliance, and toughen me up. Also because I think he was worried that if he had to look at my tuition-wasting face any longer he’d smash it in with a large object like a brick or a Cuisinart.
I arrived in Colorado via Greyhound in March, and was shuttled up into the Rockies to join our ragtag group—a few younger folk, such as Evan, a kid close to my own age, as well as some more-adult attendees, including a producer for daytime soap operas from New York. All of us were either between phases in our lives or looking for some kind of adventure.
After our first day of hauling sleds up steep mountainsides through neck-deep snow, I was given the responsibility of digging the latrine. Basically just a hole in the snow we would cover with a couple of feet of hard-packed snow when we shuffled off in the morning. I gamely dug a trench well out of sight of camp.
That night, after a classic wilderness meal of some gooey stuff resembling spackle mixed with old bubblegum, I found myself in need of relief. Thanks to my cross-country Greyhound journey, several days of road food, bad coffee, and lack of exercise had created an intestinal traffic jam of massive proportions, and an afternoon of skiing had done the charitable deed of moving things along the agenda. As the temperature dropped in the darkness of the Colorado high country, I put on my headlamp and shuffled off through the trees to take care of business.
I was faced with a number of challenges. First of all, three layers of pants—long johns, fleece, and large, Cordura nylon pants that Outward Bound provided to students. I gingerly edged backward to the side of the hole and began wrestling with the bulky layers to pull them down. Given my over-the-ankle mountaineering boots, I couldn’t get the large wad of clothing pushed down very far—it was all bunched up behind my knees. And I had stupidly dug the latrine too far away from any helpful trees that would’ve provided a sturdy handhold.
In order to pull off a successful enterprise, I had to lean way over, awkwardly sticking my rear over the pit while keeping my balance on the edge. My muscles were burning from the day’s ski with pack and sled as I assumed a masochistic contortionist’s pose like I was performing in some scatological Cirque du Soleil. The wind blew, and gritty bits of snow blinded me as I bared my backside and tried to gently ease myself into position over the hole.
Trying to relieve oneself while straining every single muscle, in the dark, over a pit in the snow, breath ragged from eye-popping altitude, all while wrapped up in layers of fleece and nylon and polypropylene, headlamp beam bouncing wildly around, wearing a pair of mountaineering boots, nether regions shrinking from the cold—the whole project was doomed from the start.
I managed to fire off the first few rounds, but my legs were trembling. Balance was precarious, and the shifting snow under my feet and near darkness gave me little to no visual cues to my body’s position.
At some point my momentum went past whatever razor’s edge only physics can determine, and I began to fall into the very grave I’d dug for myself. It was while I was peeing, so as I fell, awkwardly twisting, a lively stream of urine whirled about like a lawn sprinkler. I tried to arch my body, roll—do anything to avoid landing squarely beneath me. I failed. The fall was quick and the landing painless—physically, in any case, though my dignity was forever gutted. I believe I screamed a combination of words that sounded something like “Gahsheetargew!” to express my revulsion and shame.
There was nothing for it. I had to haul myself out of my own excre-mental grave, bare-assed and simpering. After scrubbing my body blue with cold, grainy snow trying to clean myself, I hobbled back to the tents, feeling defeated and tired.
“What took you so long? Train not arrive on time?” said Evan. He was smiling. I wondered if I could trigger an avalanche to fall on him the next day.