A little story

I wrote this partly for an assignment, but also just to write, I felt a little inspired. I have taken liberty with some of it, but I tried to capture the humor in the situation.




River was not the first person I would go to if I had a problem with an outhouse. Her dread-locked grey hair, dingy miss-matched clothing, and general demeanor said I was more likely to encounter a few bags of alaskan marijuana in her homemade 'junk sailboat', not an all inclusive self -published guide to the bacterial breakdown of the composting outhouse toilet and waste management system.

At first the outhouse had it's usual smell, human urine and feces festering at a healthy 100 degrees in a confined space. However, this weekend with all of the visitors to the area, over 1000 by last count, our tiny little outhouse was near overflow stage. Even in the cold air of the morning you could smell it before you saw it over the ridge. Parts of your brain would fire off as you walked towards it, animal instincts told you that it was something you should be fleeing, not willingly journeying into its closed and stuffy interior.

As it is with most tasks on the island you call out to whomever can help and expect said help to arrive on 'island time'. It's a part of the lifestyle that we have all come to love and appreciate, while others find frustratingly out of sync with the hustle and bustle of 'city time'. This being said, it was nearly a week after we put in the call for someone to stop the toxic sewage seepage that River showed up at the steps to the house introducing herself. At first I was taken aback by the dainty handshake from the proffered hand in front of me. A dainty little creature, almost mouse like in demeanor, clad head to toe in what I can only imagine were once scrubs of bright turquoises and yellows, and a blue baseball cap atop a head of thick dirty grey hair permanently shifted to one side from a lack of washing. I was a little upset that it had taken so long to service the one working toilet, aside from the woods, that is used as the toilet for myself, my workers, and all of the public that happens to walk the trail out here. For a week visitors must have been thinking as they walked down the steep hill to the lighthouse proper "Welcome to Turn Point, turning heads, and ships, and your stomachs since 1893". Granted I hadn't put the call out and said there was a fire, but maybe I should have, and then they would of sent over someone with enough heft to handle the monumental job.

We spent a good 20 minutes dispensing with the usual chit chat of islanders, talking about life, dinner, what that grass is for, if the eagles were especially active etc... Finally, after a particularly interesting conversation regarding 'swifts vs swallows' she announced that she would be heading up to the outhouse to begin work. I chuckled and said good luck, it's pretty bad up there. I had encountered many of her type around the islands. Men and women that had a general distaste of the government, usually on the verge of or not complete conspiracy theorists, people that elected to live 'au natural' as the earth intended, and sad to say, usually felt that work was beneath them, instead they were to commune with nature and expect handouts from the community. The kind that leaves you sarcastically saying "We have been wrong all a long, they have chosen the right path, only we are to snobbish to realize it. "

I watched her walk up the hill side to the odoriferous abomination and set about tidying up the property and conducting my nightly rounds. Forty five minutes later she came trotting down happy as a, dare I say it, shit eating clam.

"Whew!" she exclaimed, "it wasn't bad till I stirred it"
Stirred it, I thought, good lord why would you ever want to do that. However my response came out as a simple "Oh?"
"I am going to be back down tomorrow to pressure wash it and clean out the rest of it" she responded.
This only conjured images of a shit-spackled outhouse. Had stirring it set off a bomb and she was powerless as it gushed up in horrid torrents, eventually forcing her out of the offensive site?
"Do you need anything from me, buckets, water, scrub brushes. Do you need some bleach?" I asked.
"Oh no, I have everything, and I don't need bleach, I don't want to kill it."

'It'? What is 'it', is 'it' alive, does 'it' move, will 'it' come and kill me in my sleep under a deadly cloud of hydrogen sulfide? Her choice of words was not helping me conjure up an image of a possibly pleasant and peaceful pooping palace in the near future. As I watched her walk away that evening, I was reminded of the nightmares I had as a child using the pit toilet we had while building my grandparents house. No matter what they said, my youthful brain said there were monsters down there that would reach up and grab me and pull me down.

The next day she arrived in a beat up truck, one that had already seen its prime and had ended up on this island to die. In the back of her truck were several rusted oil barrels full of water, sloshing about. As the truck rocked over the big rocks the water in the drums would swish one way then make a mad dash towards the side with the open hole on the top, forming little geysers and fountains as she jostled down our 'road'. River hopped out of the driver seat, spry and as excited as yesterday.

"Do you need a hand?" I offered as she walked to the back of her pick up with a small bag.
"sure, let me get changed first" she replied.
I leaned on the edge of the pick up and watched as she donned a black full body tyvek suit, thick rubber gloves and booties, and a respirator. I half expected her to pull a snorkel, fins, and a floating ducky out of her bag to complete the profile of SEPTIC SCUBA SALLY. She caught my inquisitive look and said "Oh, don't worry, you will be fine"
"Ok" I said as I shrugged "what do you need me to do?"
"I need you to collect all of your grass clippings"
"My grass clippings?" I replied incredulously.
"Yes and any kitchen waste or waste water you have, bring it all up here" she said as she grabbed the pressure washing unit and prepped it.

With her back turned to me I could only assume that, that was that. I had my marching orders and gathered the 5 gallon bucket I used for coffee grounds, old pasta water, mop water left overs etc, that I usually tote up into the forest and deposit under a moss bed. I also filled another bucket with the grass I had cut around the sidewalk and had intended to move to a debris pile far enough away so as not to become a fire hazard. I heaved the two buckets to the top of the ridge before the outhouse and saw her standing there inside the outhouse pressure washing around the base of the 'toilet stand'. (This outhouse is a composting toilet, thus no flush, just a raised hole with a nice wooden seat). Although it was but a small pressure washer, the nozzle appeared as a fire hose in comparison to the bearer. She finished with a few short blasts of water to the ceiling and walls and walked back to shut off the pressure washer. Already I noticed the smell had dissipated some, and at least the inside was looking far better then I had imagined yesterday. With the sunlight entering the side ventilation shafts and striking the water droplets, it gave a sparkling almost fairy like glow to the once repugnant part of my daily routine.

"Go ahead and dump the grass clippings down the hole" she said, bringing me back to reality from my temporary dream.
"Ok, but why grass?" I asked.
"To make it smell sweet, kinda like candied apples"
Candied apples was the last thing I wanted to associate with this particular locale. Her statement brought up thoughts of swearing off candied apples for the rest of my life.
"And this kitchen water?" I inquired as I lifted both buckets.
"Put that in after you put the grass in, try to get the grass all over in a good layer, you will probably have to reach in and toss it around" she replied.
Oh god, I thought, she wants me to not only put stuff in the 'hole' but also to stick my hand inside an area that contains the excrement of over 1000 people, I don't think this was a part of my job description. My grandparents had always taught me to not be scared of something, to at least try it, and if it's a job, just do it with out reservation. I steeled myself and took one deep breath before going inside with the buckets. The shining fairy image I had seen of this outhouse, well damn fairies can go to hell, the smell still lingered about. Lingered, no, it didn't linger. Linger is a term you use when you describe the smell of jasmine or a pleasant flower. No, this made the air chewy. Chewy is more accurate of a description. I felt if I opened my mouth I could chew the air. The thought of tasting it on my tongue was nearly as offensive as the actual smell invading my nostrils.

"Here, use these" River said as she offered me the rubber gloves "no sense getting anything on you".
I was thankful for the gesture, and glad that she had turned down the cuffs so I could pull them on with out having to touch any of the 'used' parts.
"Ok, can you explain something to me, I know this is a composting toilet, and I grew up on septic systems and compost piles, but why do you want me to put grass, coffee, soapy water and all of that in here?" I asked as I reached my hand down the hole and tossed my first handful of grass into a corner. I figured if I talked I could avoid from focusing to much on my location.
"The grass forms a positive layer for the bacteria to feast on and introduces a series of smells that somewhat offsets the amount and type of ammonia emitted by human urine. The coffee is a great neutralizer and will decrease the amount of smell along with increasing the acidity slightly. This increase, along with the eco-friendly soap you use will kill off the bad bacteria. Of course this only encourages the good stuff to multiply, grow, and eat more. " she explained.

Whether or not her statement had any scientific truth behind it, I was going to take her words at face value. Something about her body language as she continued into the complexities of competing bacteria colonies found in waste management systems said that she knew what she was talking about. I grabbed my second bucket and poured its contents into the hole, listening with a sickly interest to the way the coffee grounds fell in large clumps and 'plopped' in the effluence below. When I finished River was standing behind me with a bag of freshly opened peat moss.
"This adds natural hummus to the mix, think of this outhouse as going to the bathroom on a really big compost pile. When I add this it helps absorb the moisture and thus makes it easier to digest for all of the little buggies and wormies that would other wise drown in a soil that was too watery." She said as she handed me a large funnel to place on top of the hole. "Hold this, and I'll pour."

The rest of the clean up went fairly quick, and as I walked back to the house to use my sun shower, I noticed the smell had gone. Or, I had only become accustomed to it in full force. Only time would tell, and this next week, along with a weekend full of visitors would be the true test of her methods. If I went to the outhouse to leave a 'present' and left desiring candied apples and espresso, then I would thank her for her work. For now I waved as she turned the truck around and headed it bouncing back up the hill. My initial reservations over her personal hygiene aside, she was a hard worker and scrubbed that outhouse to a spit shine. I guess it doesn't pay to be a germa-phobe and clean outhouses for a living. "What an odd woman" I thought aloud to no one.