I peed in the woods today
Ok so I didn't actually pee in the woods today but I did the last time I went hiking which was a couple of weeks ago. I had to pee so badly and when you're hiking there aren't restrooms so I stepped off the trail into an area that had a group of trees and concealed myself as best I could and peed. I had a towel that I could wipe myself with and then went along my way. It was weird but walking the AT I'm gonna have to get used to doing more than that in the woods.
Let's actually take a moment to discuss that because as a new person to hiking I am fully aware that I'll be leaving certain things in the woods but you can't just leave it there; as a hiker we want to leave no trace of ourselves which is why there is a set of principles called Leave No Trace. When I first started hiking I'd didn't know of this concept but you naturally want to keep the environment you're hiking in pristine at least that's my natural reaction. There is a reason why we go out into the woods, the natural beauty, and we don't want these natural places to be littered with trash, waste, and human excrement. The concept behind Leave No Trace is simple, leave as minimal of an impact as you can while hiking or camping in the woods. We are not the natural inhabitants of these places so we need to be respectful of the ones that are there.
The seven principles of Leave No Trace are: Plan ahead and prepare, Travel and camp on durable surfaces, Dispose of waste properly, Leave what you find, Minimize campfire impacts, Respect wildlife, and Be considerate of other visitors. I'm not going to go over all of them in detail but I will address disposing of waste properly since that's what we started discussing. So the reason why this is so important is because you don't want to pollute water, prevent spreading any type of diseases, and simply keep people from running across your poop. What I've learned is that you dig a "cathole" which is about 6-8 inches deep and do your business. You'll have to carry a small garden shovel but they have lightweight ones for that purpose. Now you may ask yourself "what do I do when I need to wipe?" That's a great question, there are lots of bio-degradable toilet papers out there now a days that you just wipe and drop it in the hole when you're done then cover it back up with the dirt you dug out of the hole. You need to make sure you're a good distance from any water source I think 200 ft away is the minimal amount and make sure you don't drop trow near the trail that's just rude.
Now as you know I am a female so there is something a little extra I have to deal with while on the trail and I'm sure you've thought of it by now, my menstrual cycle. Yeah unfortunately you just gotta deal with it as a woman. There are several things you can do if you want to do a multiple day hike or a thru-hike; one is take birth control and stop yourself from having periods (I'd prefer to stay away from this method), pack tampons and/or pads, or the diva cup. When using tampons/pads you have to remember you brought it in you have to take it out so that's going to get a little messy and you'll need separate containers for obvious reasons. There are myths that the scent of blood attracts bears, that's simply not true so don't be afraid to hike because of this problem. Make sure that when you wrap up your tampons/pads and put them back in your pack whatever container you have is an air tight seal else your pack will start to smell. The final option that I've at least come across is the Diva Cup, its a simple little plastic cup that you put in like a tampon but it catches the blood and you can simply wash it out when you need to empty it. From the research I've done on this it seems like the right option for myself but I haven't used one yet, I will get it and use it and review it later and I'll post the results. According to its description you only need to empty it once to twice a day depending on your flow so we'll see how that works.
Anyway, I hope this was enlightening to those of you who are new to the hiking aspect of things and I will leave you with a vlog of my first day of hiking for the year. I've decided to make keep a video diary of my hiking trips leading up to the AT to help me get used to using a camera while out on the trail and to simply document my process for myself and for you guys to enjoy. Oh and a side note, the video is not the best I'm still playing around and figuring out how I'm going to do this but I procrastinated so long in editing this I wanted to just put it out there, my future ones will look better.
Let's actually take a moment to discuss that because as a new person to hiking I am fully aware that I'll be leaving certain things in the woods but you can't just leave it there; as a hiker we want to leave no trace of ourselves which is why there is a set of principles called Leave No Trace. When I first started hiking I'd didn't know of this concept but you naturally want to keep the environment you're hiking in pristine at least that's my natural reaction. There is a reason why we go out into the woods, the natural beauty, and we don't want these natural places to be littered with trash, waste, and human excrement. The concept behind Leave No Trace is simple, leave as minimal of an impact as you can while hiking or camping in the woods. We are not the natural inhabitants of these places so we need to be respectful of the ones that are there.
The seven principles of Leave No Trace are: Plan ahead and prepare, Travel and camp on durable surfaces, Dispose of waste properly, Leave what you find, Minimize campfire impacts, Respect wildlife, and Be considerate of other visitors. I'm not going to go over all of them in detail but I will address disposing of waste properly since that's what we started discussing. So the reason why this is so important is because you don't want to pollute water, prevent spreading any type of diseases, and simply keep people from running across your poop. What I've learned is that you dig a "cathole" which is about 6-8 inches deep and do your business. You'll have to carry a small garden shovel but they have lightweight ones for that purpose. Now you may ask yourself "what do I do when I need to wipe?" That's a great question, there are lots of bio-degradable toilet papers out there now a days that you just wipe and drop it in the hole when you're done then cover it back up with the dirt you dug out of the hole. You need to make sure you're a good distance from any water source I think 200 ft away is the minimal amount and make sure you don't drop trow near the trail that's just rude.
Now as you know I am a female so there is something a little extra I have to deal with while on the trail and I'm sure you've thought of it by now, my menstrual cycle. Yeah unfortunately you just gotta deal with it as a woman. There are several things you can do if you want to do a multiple day hike or a thru-hike; one is take birth control and stop yourself from having periods (I'd prefer to stay away from this method), pack tampons and/or pads, or the diva cup. When using tampons/pads you have to remember you brought it in you have to take it out so that's going to get a little messy and you'll need separate containers for obvious reasons. There are myths that the scent of blood attracts bears, that's simply not true so don't be afraid to hike because of this problem. Make sure that when you wrap up your tampons/pads and put them back in your pack whatever container you have is an air tight seal else your pack will start to smell. The final option that I've at least come across is the Diva Cup, its a simple little plastic cup that you put in like a tampon but it catches the blood and you can simply wash it out when you need to empty it. From the research I've done on this it seems like the right option for myself but I haven't used one yet, I will get it and use it and review it later and I'll post the results. According to its description you only need to empty it once to twice a day depending on your flow so we'll see how that works.
Anyway, I hope this was enlightening to those of you who are new to the hiking aspect of things and I will leave you with a vlog of my first day of hiking for the year. I've decided to make keep a video diary of my hiking trips leading up to the AT to help me get used to using a camera while out on the trail and to simply document my process for myself and for you guys to enjoy. Oh and a side note, the video is not the best I'm still playing around and figuring out how I'm going to do this but I procrastinated so long in editing this I wanted to just put it out there, my future ones will look better.
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