2022
The Standing Approach emilie- noelle provos t
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June 2020 article in the New York Times offers helpful tips for women who find themselves having to pee while spending time outdoors. “First, check that you’re not flashing anyone,” the article’s author, Jen Miller, writes. “Then find a spot that is clear of things like poison ivy, wasps nests, fire ants, and sharp debris . . . squat low to avoid splash back.” When I started hiking in March 2019, after my mother was diagnosed with stagefour lung cancer, I didn’t realize that peeing in the woods was something women needed instructions to do, but some of the tips are helpful, if not obvious, such as “try to pee downhill.” In early 2019, I was sadly out-of-shape, having worked desk jobs for nearly twenty years. But I didn’t start scrambling up rocks and climbing over fallen trees to improve my health. Listening to the soft rustling of hemlock boughs and beating the hell out of myself were the only things that helped me manage the white-hot rage and resentment that became my constant companions after my mother’s diagnosis. AnnaOutdoors, a blog for women who climb, camp, and hike, gives detailed instructions for getting your clothes out of the way when peeing outside: “Pull your pants and underwear down so that when you squat they sit around [your] mid-thighs to knees. It is harder for the stream to clear your pants if they are around your ankles, and you are more vulnerable to tripping and losing your balance.” This one also seemed self-evident until one day when I was hiking with my friend Liz. After an hour on the trail, she stopped and said that she had needed to pee since we left the car, but had been holding it because she couldn’t figure out how to avoid getting her pants wet. My mother chain-smoked for nearly sixty years. She smoked when she was pregnant with my three siblings and me, and after her own parents died from lung cancer in the early 1990s. She refused to quit even when my extended family and I cleared our schedules in order to make casseroles and drive her to chemotherapy appointments. Six children, ranging in age from two to twenty-one, called my mother “Grandma.” As a daughter, and especially as a mother, I sometimes still feel angry about my mother’s unwillingness to participate more fully in her cancer treatment. If she couldn’t quit smoking to save herself, why couldn’t she do it for us? One of the reasons hiking helped me deal with my mother’s cancer is because in order to do it safely you need to be mindful of your surroundings at all times. You can’t think about anything else. Being in the woods also reminds me of when I was a little kid. I have fond memories of the swamp near the house where I grew up. It was a great place 128
The Lowell Review
