”Tales From The Underbrush” documents, with occasional hyperbole, the experiences of the artist over a lifetime of interaction with what used to be called nature, now reinvented as the environment for reasons apparently best known by just about everyone in the world excepting the artist-writer. These wilderness interactions have come mainly while working as a geologist, briefly as a forester, but sometimes as just a guy whose principal happiness in life has been derived from being outdoors. Not that life in the wilderness, be it at work or at play has been without pain, discomfort, deprivation and even danger. Fortunately, the passage of time more often then not artfully blots out or at least dims the recollections that wound, substituting instead a recall that if perhaps not substantiating the aging athlete’s jest of “the older I get, the better I was”, at least allows tales to unfold that warm the memory and give substance to the life that experienced them.
The artist proposes to post monthly herein a chapter from his book “Tales From The Underbrush” in the hope that his adventures may be shared and enjoyed by those who might stumble onto this blog. This month’s entry continues the tale.
Bleeding The Lizard and Number Two
“For this relief, much thanks”
William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1601)
“The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.”
Chinese proverb
When conducted in those parts of the Canadian Shield that are rife with the black fly and all his voracious, treacherous, blood-seeking cousins, answering the call of nature can be a challenging exercise and one that often requires specialized techniques in order to minimize equipment damage and encourage repeated use thereof. This in turn helps to promote amicable relationships with one’s camp mates, not to speak of doing one’s part for global warming by minimizing the excessive build-up and escape of greenhouse gases.
Some might deem the subject at hand to be delicate or crude, or both, and far be it from me to offend those sensibilities. As a possible solution to mollify those concerns, and since the treatment of the subject matter involves mainly process and in some instances detailed procedures to be conducted literally “by the numbers”, to describe the functions involved I have regressed to my early childhood where the earliest numbers learned were……….you guessed it……..number one and number two!
Number One
In the bush, the ideal time to go for your last liquid relief of the day is when all hands have left the camp fire for the night. This allows for a fairly sedate and safe procedure, providing that said camp fire has not itself retired early for the night, but rather remains active and reasonably robust. Under these latter conditions, the subject places himself close to the fire, downwind and preferably fully within the acrid, eye watering campfire smoke. The theory underlying such a move is that lung cancer takes a while to develop, and is, in the short term, a preferred option to having one’s extremities attacked and perhaps irreparably mutilated by the depraved winged warriors that envelop all but the sanctity of the vicious vapours of the campfire. Such are the depths to which bush life can descend, that toxic matter becomes one’s true friend! To produce the required degree of smoke, it may be necessary to add a selected piece of a gnarled, sappy, resinous, deformed fibrous substance called eastern spruce, and which embarrassingly passes for wood in the most of the bush of the Canadian Shield. The burning of but one modest piece of this material can produce in one minute more tar and nicotine than the entire cigarette industry could produce in a year. Working at a pace which might be described as maximum emergency, one then follows a strict procedure, normally well honed by repetition: unzip, fumble, unlimber, direct, let go. At this juncture, any haphazard deployment of the extinguisher that might threaten the campfire is to be considered as not only potentially self-defeating, but unsportsmanlike, should some one other of one’s camp mates require their final relief of the evening at a later time. Rather, the extinguisher should be directed in a circular pattern around the periphery of the fire in a fashion which serves to empty the extinguisher in as expeditious a manner as possible while at the same time allowing the fire to maintain itself and, importantly, continue to emit the essential smoke defense therefrom. It should be said that it is immaterial as to whether extinguisher rotation about this fire periphery is conducted in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction, unless of course you happen to be in the southern hemisphere where it is not important either. A fire that has been reduced to a state of quiescence such that the aforementioned procedures cannot be conducted with a similar level of safety, not to speak of satisfaction, introduces additional risk to the subject, since alternative procedures are not known to have been developed to counteract this higher level of risk. Suffice to say that the subject must at all costs avoid quenching the fire with one’s extinguisher lest the safe maintenance of flow, void, retrieval, hanger re-entry and zip-up of the equipment become vulnerable to the penile perils of Pauline.
Extinguishing the camp fire prior to the safe re-hangering of the equipment was in that era also ill-advisable, not only because replacement parts for the equipment were unavailable and equipment repair facilities were absent or of dubious quality, but most importantly because proper nursing care of the equipment during any injury recovery period was normally non-existent.
Number Two
The normal bush camp setup is fairly standard for receiving the proceeds of the fiber content of the previous day’s baked bean supper, or perhaps even very soon after the prevailing day’s baked bean supper, and as opposed to the gaseous contents of said meal(s) which have usually departed their owner a lot earlier, albeit often over an extensive, and for those nearby, an especially unpleasant period of time. The setup, which for want of a better name, might be termed as Thomas Crapper’s Bush Emporium, normally consists, at least in the glacial, nutrition poor, swamp ridden expanse of the Canadian Shield, of a hopefully peeled, if invariably splintery, knotted, gnarly, twisted, rotted, hideously deformed, gummy, resinous piece of classic eastern spruce designed in principal, if never in reality, to sit horizontally as a bar on two, hopefully stout, but equally hideous forked tree limbs driven vertically, more or less, into the ground just in front of a pit hammered and dug out of the rock and debris-filled paucity of earth that defines the glaciated Canadian Shield. The responsibility for excavation of this hole and its accompanying architecture was normally accorded the junior geologist based on the time tested assumption that while he knew absolutely nothing about field geology or anything else of consequence for that matter, it was presumed that at that juncture in his life he may have acquired some vague notion of the difference between his ass and his elbow, if you’ll pardon the metaphor. While this latter assumption regrettably proved itself to not necessarily be reliable either, there was always hope sprung eternal that if only by accident, some sort of usable facility might be constructed by the junior before the camp was moved to a new location.
Additionally, a bush party of say, seven souls is analogous to a small army unit with a rigid hierarchy of command that reflected in a general sense the relative importance of the responsibilities and duties that were performed by the members of the party. Thus it should come as no major revelation that behind and subservient to the party chief, the senior geologist, the camp cook, and the bushmen and canoemen, came the tail that did not only not wag the dog but instead appeared to solely exist for the express purpose of cleaning its nether regions. I speak of course of the junior geologist, an oxymoronic title so devoid of reality as to mock the science to which it is allegedly related.
Meanwhile back at the bar, (a phrase that, in the alcohol-free bush camps of my youth, would produce glassy-eyed melancholy in all those poor souls encompassed by such thoughts), conceptually similar operational procedures to those of Number 1, and for similar, ahem, end objectives, are required to be executed, albeit without benefit of campfire smoke. Combination fire pit/crappers, while theoretically attractive, nonetheless possess certain inherent unwelcome features, and as such are virtually unknown to the geological fraternity. It is rumoured however that such units are in wide use by politicians in order to provide smoke, if not mirrors, as well as thematic substance for their speeches.
This process of evacuation, while possibly not as complex nor logistically challenging as say the evacuation of Dunkirk, nonetheless featured certain analogies of strategy that were to been entertained in order to if not defeat, then at least contain the enemy. To defeat this well trained, voracious, and indefatigable enemy made up of the myriad species of little biting buggers, various defensive strategies have been tried, ranging from diversionary flashlights or lanterns placed metres away from the action, to the furious smoking of eight plain end cigarettes at one time while perched on the bar. This latter tactic has some inherent risks however, should the smoker, through excessive inhalation pass out and topple over the bar into the pit.
Likewise, exuberantly waving a towel in front of ones privates can sometime lead to a certain accidental snapping action, which if misdirected can result in not too dissimilar injuries to certain parts of the equipment that is used in procedures described in “Number One.” Another weakness of the frontal towel waving defense is of course to weaken one’s flanks and expose them to a full rear guard onslaught by the enemy on the nether regions of the posterior corpus draped over the bar.
Once again, discipline and training are really the only solutions that can minimize the blood letting from which, to one degree or the other, there is no escape. The sequence of preparation, delivery and safe recovery back to base generally goes something like the following.
A copious wad of paper is clutched in the favourite hand, which is conventionally the left hand although there are no strict rules in this regard, and ambidexterity is definitely a decided asset. The subject user, hereafter known as “Pants”, then stands at the ready in a slight crouch over the bar, head up and alert, feet comfortably apart on the balls of the feet for optimum balance. This is a posture that will permit a smooth drop of lower garments in one loose, easy motion, leading into the sitting, bomb delivery position on the bar. From this preparatory posture it therefore remains but to unbuckle, unzip, and ramp up the tension slightly. This latter action is important so that no vital time is wasted when the proper delivery position is attained. It should be cautioned however that excessive tensing and constriction at this point should be avoided lest a premature delivery of the load were to occur before the delivery system has been properly centred over the target and bomb bay doors fully opened and ready for the drop. Such untimely action might be termed as “premature evacuation” were it not for the fact that a similar sounding, and distantly related term for testosterone over-loaded males has already been coined by some guy named Kinsey. But I digress.
The successful completion of these preparatory operations is then followed by the peel-down of trousers and shorts in a smooth, unified motion to a point down the legs sufficient to allow the full unfettered delivery of the of the bomb load. This has traditionally been a stage of the operation that often invites a tempting and understandably timid degree of trouser lowering, a natural reflex reaction to the horrifying sounds and mental imagery induced by the swarming hordes of starving, crazed, winged carnivores being driven mad in their anticipation of the expanse of smooth, (largely) hairless flesh that will be exposed to their obscene, lustful cravings. I terrify myself with the mere imagery conjectured by these words. Under no circumstances however tempting, however terrifying the might be the thoughts concerning the destruction of, or at least extreme and painful injury to the equipment, should there develop what is known as trouser “short drop”, analogous perhaps to the “short sheeting” of beds by young juveniles at summer camps or even more immature and mentally stunted juveniles at college fraternities. Failure to lower the trousers and shorts to a position sufficient to allow proper unimpeded delivery of the load to the target may cause an aggravating and embarrassing situation known as ”early drop” or “missed target.” Reloading under these circumstances can be awkward, even impossible, and may require the complete, awkward and time consuming struggle to remove all lower garments past obstructive boots, thus inviting an all-out circumpolar assault by the enemy. A situation such as this tends to totally counteract, not to speak of contradict, the fundamental objective of the exercise, namely relief, and in addition can have lifelong effects on both morale and personality. The ramifications of short dropping may also help explain the current fashion of wearing the belt line of one’s trousers somewhere in the vicinity of the knees.
Assuming that a proper pre-drop, bomb aiming position has been attained without (major) incident, and the correct constrictive pressure has been earlier applied, it remains but to expose the bomb bay, open the bomb door and let go the bombs, or stream of bombs should the cook happened to have made hot chili for supper. When all (known) bombs have been released, the bomb bay is preliminarily cleaned and disinfected through the proper, if generally frenzied application of paper to the facilities, with the maximum minimization of time the key factor in this stage of the operation. This afterbirth is then jettisoned into the hole and trousers and shorts quickly restored to a properly zipped and belted position. At this point, some conflict has been known to occur in the form of the entrapment, during the garment restoration process, of some remnant elements of the enemy; limited numbers but self sufficient guerilla squads able to conduct small scale, but pinpoint covert action, with resultant devastating damage to both equipment and morale, based on the fact that a) these guerillas can see in the dark; b) they know where they are, and; c) they have a sense scent of where the targets are. This terrifying and potentially highly injurious situation introduces a dilemma that demands a decision of whether to repeat the initial phase of the operation in a sort of a dummy run, hoping, through a desperate fanning action in the pants-lowered position that these guerilla units can be blown away as it were, and that trouser recovery and elevation to a proper and (relatively) safe position can be achieved without fresh guerilla units successfully replacing their supposedly fallen comrades.
Assuming however that the mission has successfully achieved its target without requiring a post-drop dummy run, Pants then runs, not walks to the nearest soap and water facility to complete the cleansing process. Pants then sprints, not runs, to the tent. At this point the final phase of the mission remains to be completed. In some ways this phase, which requires primarily mental and psychological agility rather than the physical prowess of the earlier phases of the operation, remains the most important part of the entire exercise. Therefore, despite possible ongoing assaults by the enemy, a slight but definable pause should be made before entry of Pants into the tent. The actual entry should present to those assembled therein, a profile of studied, casual nonchalance and total indifference on the part of Pants; with the inference that Pants was unaware of the existence of any flies of consequence out there at Thomas Crapper’s Emporium, or more preferably, that real men such as Pants are completely impervious to any perceived and deemed exaggerated threat to one’s welfare by these allegedly threatening insects. Then comes the coup-de-grace to clinch this display of arrogant indifference, and to show one’s utter contempt and disdain for those cowardly camp mates who bemoan the supposed dangers and repercussions accruing from a trip to Mr. Crapper’s facility, accessed from camp in this particular case by a somewhat tortuous route to a point some one hundred metres away. It is therefore imperative that one takes great pains to note to the assembled throng of wimps that one’s use of, and successful round trip in the pitch dark to the bar, was conducted in a very leisurely forty-three seconds!
A final factor merits a footnote with regard to “appearing before the bar”, to borrow a term from the legal profession. This has to do with the inherent skills required to maintain a proactive position on the device without a reactive situation that might develop from any retrograde action such as toppling. Determining what is the optimum height at which to install the bar in a vaguely horizontal position is an exercise that demands a general, if not overly obvious or obtrusive survey of the entire population of the camp that will be using the facility. In this regard, unless by some unheard of magical coincidence everybody in camp is identical in height and build, the established position of the bar is likely to satisfy nobody and invite carping and complaining by everyone, particularly in view of the fact that its placement was engineered, albeit loosely and with a result that normally would offend genuine engineers, by who else but a junior geologist. The potential pitfalls (pun intended) of bar emplacement is particularly perilous for short-legged users whose feet cannot find anchorage on the ground while perching on the bar. Since any nearby trees or branches that might normally be grasped for balance and stability have already been removed in the process of constructing the crapper, there remains only the terrifying prospect of the dreaded “swing factor”; that situation where the momentum of less than perfect balance on the bar invites the worse-than-death prospect of toppling over into the pit. Rescue therefrom is virtually impossible unless a sufficiently large, and probably unavailable (having fled into the bush in terror) party of volunteered junior geologists can be conscripted to form a rescue party.
“Riding the bar” in a fashion that permits safe, successful usage, and most importantly survival for another day, closely resembles that skill that would be required while sitting naked on a high trapeze, devoid of a safety net, scratching an itch on your bum with one hand, waving to the crowd with the other hand, while simultaneously avoiding several hundred screaming, starving cannibals that had been fired at you out of cannons from below.
As Shakespeare did indeed say, “for this relief, much thanks.”
Copyright © 2008 Ian de W. Semple
