Bronk
01-28-2016, 16:10
Thought I'd take a few moments to go back through some old posts of Weary's and see if I could collect some words of wisdom...here's what I've found so far...feel free to look for yourself and add to it:
"Building a shelter, without building a privy, is an act of vandalism. Allowing a shelter to remain, without a privy is irresponsible. A privy can be as simple as an upside down wooden box perched above a hole, with an opening at the top. Yes. Federal regs that require handicap access, are silly. But neither are they hard to follow. If you insist on housing your privy box in a building, handicap access requires only a wider door and enough space to turn around a wheel chair.
The tiny Maine Appalachian Trail Club, which manages a couple of hundred miles of the AT trail system, goes beyond the minimum requirements for its new privies. We build them mostly above ground, to encourage better decomposition of waste matter, which complicates the construction. But they are routinely built by small groups of maintainers over a weekend or so.
Even if every hiker followed good waste disposal practices, the practice can't work over time. Quickly good nearby soil is used up and it becomes cat holes being dug into cat holes. But every hiker won't dig a cat hole. Most don't know any better. It's just walking, remember. Only a tiny percentage read anything before heading to the hills with their lunches and packs."
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"He goes off the deep end occasionally, but Lone Wolf has been among the wisest half dozen or so posters during my years on White Blaze. His mind does work in subtle ways that not all, apparently, can appreciate."
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"Building a shelter, without building a privy, is an act of vandalism. Allowing a shelter to remain, without a privy is irresponsible. A privy can be as simple as an upside down wooden box perched above a hole, with an opening at the top. Yes. Federal regs that require handicap access, are silly. But neither are they hard to follow. If you insist on housing your privy box in a building, handicap access requires only a wider door and enough space to turn around a wheel chair.
The tiny Maine Appalachian Trail Club, which manages a couple of hundred miles of the AT trail system, goes beyond the minimum requirements for its new privies. We build them mostly above ground, to encourage better decomposition of waste matter, which complicates the construction. But they are routinely built by small groups of maintainers over a weekend or so.
Even if every hiker followed good waste disposal practices, the practice can't work over time. Quickly good nearby soil is used up and it becomes cat holes being dug into cat holes. But every hiker won't dig a cat hole. Most don't know any better. It's just walking, remember. Only a tiny percentage read anything before heading to the hills with their lunches and packs."
*******************
"He goes off the deep end occasionally, but Lone Wolf has been among the wisest half dozen or so posters during my years on White Blaze. His mind does work in subtle ways that not all, apparently, can appreciate."
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