Other states, other lives, other souls

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In the second week of October this year I was on the beach at Ogunquit, Maine. It was a rough repeat of last year’s COVID-19 Desperation Road Trip. I was watching the tide come in and reading my grandfather’s Upton Sinclair book–Dragon Harvest– while my husband arranged the names of his two grandchildren, using little shells in the sand. After helping him produce a stop-animation of Theo’s name, he spelled out Aurora’s name and let it be.  A family came by to sun bathe, while the father of the family surfed. The mother inadvertently stepped on the shells.  After getting an explanation of what they were seeing, they backed off and settled in nearby. 

Next, I watched the very young toddler in the family squat down effortlessly to pick up the shells, examine them, and put them down for at least five-ten minutes before exhausting her attention span. It was an excellent squat, so deep that her diapered butt grazed the sand.  I was envious.  I have always prided myself on my squatting ability. Keeping my Achilles tendon flexible has been part of my exercise routine for many decades.  However, I am 75 now and I have noticed that my squat is beginning to fail.  Still, on this trip, that included three nights in a tent with a bathroom more than a hundred yards away, happily I was able to rock the squat in the middle of the night when nature inevitably calls. 

Ladies!  If you fancy yourself an adventurous traveler, you’ve got to retain your squat.  A partial or tip-over squat can leave you with wet pants or skirt or sitting in the mud.

Here are just a few of the times I was glad I could rock the squat over the years:

1. I spent six years going back and forth to Cambodia for work and play from 2005-2010. The older Khmer women in Phnom Penh–those who had cut their long hair into attractive grey buzz cuts, but were still pretty slim with long skirts and flip flops– all seemed to have retained the ability to squat comfortably when needed.  In the Saturday markets there were no chairs and tables like at our farmer’s markets.  They all squatted near baskets and tubs of their wares on the ground.  As a customer, squatting brought me close enough to the food and kept my clothing off the dirty streets. 
2. When I took the bus to Vietnam or a far-away eco-lodge on the Thai border, the bathrooms we stopped at almost always required the ability to squat over a porcelain lined hole in the floor. No western style toilets to keep clean or not. Flip flops were often provided at the door to keep the floors clean.
3. In New Zealand in 2015 I did two gorgeous three-day hut-to-hut hikes with my husband. No Boundary Waters style “thrones” along the way!
4. In France, during our last road trip, there were still a few toilets in rural areas that look like this (#4):
5. Even in northern Wisconsin in 2019, I visited a modern homesteader family farm where guests were asked to pee outside. There was no indoor plumbing, only a composting toilet.
6. And, finally, here is a list of places I have been in the last ten years where the squat is still required: The Quetico wilderness canoe area on the Canadian/American border; hiking up or down the Colombian Andes; through-hiking the Pukaskwa National Park above Lake Superior in Ontario province; any car/tent camping where the bathroom is more than 100 yards away and it is the middle of the night.

For those of you who are thinking of calling the EPA on me for polluting nature, I remind you that urine, when it comes out of the body, is relatively non-toxic and has fertilizing properties.  One reason I like researching for these blog posts is that I learn new things I didn’t know when actually traveling. I found this series of answers—both expert and questionable when googling the question “Is urine sterile?”:  www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-2473,00.html . Enjoy.  If you want to improve your ability to do a deep squat where you are flat on your feet in full knee bend, try these exercises: