By Neil Shea

Recently I returned from a trip to the high Arctic, where swarms of animals and slabs of ice meet on a sea the color of black pearls. There are two stories I can tell about it. One is sort of a hillbilly yarn crammed with shootings and snow machines, seal meat and shitting out in the open where every living thing can see you. The other is about space, light, and a very large, embracing loneliness. I’ll tell about the snow machines and poop.

I was standing at the edge of the sea ice, staring at crowds of narwhals and beluga whales, when my belly rumbled letting me know it was time. The narwhals snorted and rolled in the sea, raising their unicorn tusks into the sky like Musketeer swords. I was reluctant to leave. I don’t like shitting outside in the cold and the whales’ display was otherworldly, almost painfully beautiful.

But there is a particular diagram in one of my wilderness medicine books, a diagram depicting what needs be done—with a hooked forefinger—to a person whose bum has plugged with feces. This image compels me to empty my bowels whenever possible, because I never, ever, want to be “hooked.”

So I left the whales and surveyed what I call the “shit scene.” The scene includes all variables involved in seeking relief in wilderness: Is there toilet paper? Should I dig a cat hole? How long before my bare ass becomes frostbitten? What about big, toothy creatures?

For however many hundreds of times I have done it, a sense of vulnerability creeps in whenever I poop in winter conditions. Partly it’s because of the cold, often worsened by snow or wind. Partly it’s because you’re forced to shit wearing several layers of clothing. The bulk reduces dexterity, makes accidents more likely. On the Arctic ice pack, in the endless summer light, the sense of exposure grows. Great expanses of featureless ice-scape roll out beneath a shallow sky. Privacy fades to a memory. Anyone, anything, can see you. And, of course, polar bears patrol the place, backed-up by the occasional killer walrus.

On this day the scene was challenging: To the north, open Arctic Ocean. To the south, ice flat as a skating rink. East, a half-mile away, a group of perhaps 10 or 15 eco-tourists fumbled with cameras and high-powered binoculars, desperately capturing memories. My only choice was west, but it made little difference, really. No matter the direction, I would be pooping in public. I headed out, my chili-pepper jacket glowing beneath the midnight sun. I imagined the luckless tourist’s photo: “Barbara, what’s that man doing in the background?”

Wilderness defecation is art. There is a quiet satisfaction to it, and a certain gravity. You’ve got to do it in such a way that your waste will biodegrade and remain hidden, so the next people passing through aren’t tripping over your last meal. I remember one of my early outdoor teachers discussing technique. In the desert, she’d pick a flat rock or patch of soil for a receptacle. Finished, she’d smear her feces flat with a stick—thus speeding its decomposition by sunlight and microbial action. In a final flourish, she'd sign her name on the poop canvas.

Few people I know can claim to have shat in wilderness, and I mean wilderness, not the backyard, the side of the highway, or even the woods after too many beers at a bonfire party. Fewer still have pooped close to the North Pole.

At first it might sound like an ideal toilet with a great view, right up there with dropping one in the bathroom off the Oval Office or at the top of Mt. Fuji. Sublime wonders surround you. Scanning the polar desert, you might suddenly feel connected to ancient ways of life, migrations and rhythms that have endured for millennia along one of Earth’s final frontiers. You might find, as writer Barry Lopez did, “that the edges of the real landscape became one with the edges of something I had dreamed.”

All of this does make for a beautiful setting. Add bears, freezing fog and biting wind, however, and polar pooping becomes less an inspirational voyage and more an athletic event. Stage One: run off and hunt for a suitable site. Stage Two: Scan for bears. Finding none set down the shotgun, drop into position for Stage Three. Dominate one before certain parts freeze. Then, Stage Five, run back to camp. Follow through with a dab of hand sanitizer and you’re done in under seven minutes, a new record. High fives all around.

Sometimes, to answer the call, you hop on a snowmobile and roar away until you’re an amorphous speck on the ghostly horizon. Mostly, you just walk out of camp. When a companion heads off with a thoughtful look—or sprints off with a worried one—you politely avoid looking in that direction for a while. As I went, on the blind-bright day, searching for something, anything, to hide behind, I hoped my comrades and the tourists would understand and avert their eyes.

After a few minutes I realized modesty was pointless. My jacket was beach-ball bright; I was the most conspicuous thing for miles around. It occurred to me to head back toward the tourists and really give them something to watch. But then I found a shin-high slab of ice. It was the best cover available. I was mere feet from fathomless water the color of deep space. But it was peaceful and meditative, despite the camera-clutching audience. I elbowed the stage fright aside and got down to business.

Moments later the buzz-saw sound of snowmobiles ripped over the ice, wrecking my concentration. I looked up: two machines bounced toward me. I began planning how I’d smile and wave nonchalantly.

Snowmobiles can be problematic. In the Arctic, nature often called during severe fog. I’d head out onto the ice wrapped in a cold, wet cloud. The fog added privacy but slashed visibility. At the moment of truth, as if on cue, I’d hear the whine of a speeding snowmobile. With no way to see or signal the driver, I focused on my task and hoped the machine wouldn’t flatten me into a humiliating sort of crepe. But this day was clear, and the snowmobilers veered off, mercifully, to the east.

Then, suddenly, an enormous ice sheet cracked free beside me with a slushy splash. I froze. Thoughts of panic, the absurdity of it. Would I be able to swim bare-assed? Occupied as I was, I couldn’t flee in terror. I kept very still; my thighs quivered as I held the squat. The ice beneath my feet held strong, and the broken slab cruised off, cold and blue, heading away as if under its own power, slicing between pods of narwhals.

After a moment the water calmed and the whales sank out of sight. Silence returned. Few places on earth swallow sound like the Arctic, swallow it so completely it seems gone forever. In that deep, quiet moment I must admit that I felt connected—if only by the human comedy surrounding the animal act of pooping—to all those who had sailed, sledded and suffered across the ice before.

Since I’ve returned, friends and colleagues have asked about the polar bears and the narwhals. They wondered where I slept, how cold it was, what seal tasted like. No one asks about the shit scene. And that’s how I know the Arctic will never suffer the tourist-stained fate of Yellowstone, Yosemite or other encapsulated wildernesses. There just aren’t enough toilets.

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