My girlfriend and I have always loved finding undiscovered hiking areas. After all, that’s part of the fun of hiking, right? Going off the trail and heading into uncharted territory, so to speak. So, when a few friends invited us to come along on a hiking trip, we were all for it. Unfortunately, the trip was in one of the more well-known and well-traversed areas in the Los Angeles area – Griffith Park. We decided to come along anyway, if just to get out of the house for a little while.
The problem was that this was a Saturday morning, and since we were sleeping in, we hadn’t had breakfast yet. The group, though, was leaving soon.
“There’s a Subway up the street; we can stop there,” My girlfriend suggested.
“Perfect,” I said, “Subway’s healthy enough, right?”
In hindsight, this was mistake number one. Subway had just introduced its new Breakfast Subs, and let me say that this was the first and last time I ate one. I learned it is important never to go somewhere after consuming a newly introduced food that could cause any number of shit-related issues, especially of the breakfast variety (McDonald’s Deluxe Breakfast Platter, I’m looking at you), especially when going somewhere that doesn’t have actual restrooms. Sort of a know your exits-type concept.
After taking down the Subway, we were ready to roll. We took the twenty-minute drive up the mountain, parked, stretched, and started up the hill. It was around this time when mistake number two happened – not taking advantage of the porta-potties at the foot of the trail. I didn’t really have to go at the time, but I could feel the hint of something brewing. Of course, we’ve all had this feeling and we can usually time the perfect shit if we play our shit cards right, and I like to think that I’m an expert on my shit cycle, so I let it go.
Big mistake.
After hiking for what was probably a good twenty minutes (and getting pretty far from the comfort of those porta-potties) the cramps came. And, like the winged wraiths from Mordor itself, they clenched my bowels in their death grip, threatening the safety of the chunky hobbits within me. At this point most of us can clench, squirm and twist these cramps into submission for sometimes as long as an hour, sometimes two. But I was desperate for minutes at this point. T hen, somehow, they suddenly got worse, escalating to a full-on surprise poop, the worst of which I had ever encountered. It was definitely not a simple turtle-heading situation, either. I felt as if an army of Aldabra tortoises were all trying to escape at once, ready to open up the floodgates of Shit River. Indeed, this was a game-changer, a shit that seemed to be out for vengeance and was ready to come out swinging.
I clenched. I tightened. I pinched.
But I knew it was a futile effort – I had to get to those porta-potties. And I knew that this wasn’t going to be just a quick jaunt; it was going to be Ripley tear-assing through the halls of the Nostromo in Alien. Or Indiana Jones racing through the crumbling temple halls in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I knew that this was going to be a race-to-the-last-minute, slow-motion dive to the toilet with an explosion rocking all the way behind me. Looking back however, I realized in horror that if I was going to have any chance I would have to run down the mountain as fast as possible, an act which would only upset the shit and completely negate all of my clenching efforts. It was also a Saturday, like I’d mentioned before, so the hill had its fair share of fellow hikers walking about. Some were other couples. Some were loners. Some were families with kids. I was mortified at each one I passed, thinking that they somehow knew about my dilemma in their heads. “No human being walks like that. He must be holding in a colossal monster of a shit,” they were thinking. And these people were all around, at least every fifty or so paces. To give you a perspective, the line at the porta-potty could be four, maybe five people deep. I didn’t have that kind of time. These lethal Subway shits were coming, one way or another.
And so I made the best excuse I could (had to pee), bolted in the opposite direction, and started back down the hill.
I made it about fifty yards before realizing that this shit was coming out within seconds. So, I dashed to the nearest patch of brush near the top of the mountain, dropped my shorts, and shat out what was probably the equivalent of a small, ugly, mutant child on top of a patch of dandelions within the brush. My humility aside, I have to say that shitting in the outdoors is an incredible experience. Jarring at first of course, because one is used to being confined to a tiny bathroom, but there’s something about the wind blowing, the trees rustling and the sight of downtown Los Angeles in the distance that made this shit one for the history books. Glancing around, I realized I had lucked out and seemed to find an area that was just enough off the path to where fellow hikers wouldn’t notice me as they passed. There they were mere feet away and never batted an eye in my direction as I tried to figure out how to clean up. Of course, it helped that I kept as quiet as humanly possible, so as not to call any attention to the fact that I was squatting, pantless, on a public hiking trail. Eventually, with the help of a half-bottle of water and an old sweatshirt, I managed to clean up well enough to start back down the hill without looking like an eight year-old who had messed himself.
On the way down I realized something; although I had almost suffered what could’ve been the greatest embarrassment of my life, I felt somehow triumphant of my accomplishment. Proud, even. I had slipped into the perfect shitting-brush, taken a giant shit (almost silently!) and MacGuyver’d the clean-up situation afterward. I felt like I could conquer the world. I felt like a giant load had been lifted off my shoulders and from my intestines at the same time. I felt… like how Bear Grylls must feel every day.
I felt like I just shit on a mountain.
Poop Report
