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Does Beth Dolinar pee in the woods? You betcha!

4 min read

A summer spent filming a documentary in the woods presents some problems. Let’s see: we have mosquitoes, ticks and their diseases, bad hair days, snakes, sunburn and sore muscles from lugging camera equipment. I’m finding it glamorous beyond my wildest imaginings.

I will be spending the next five months as part of a team producing a public television documentary about the bike trail from Washington, D.C., to Pittsburgh. It will cover 335 miles of nature, most of it wooded and remote.

And that is presenting a problem, and I’m talking to you, my sista readers, and you know where I’m going with this.

So it’s day one on the trail and the crew and I are a few miles from the nearest trailhead – and the nearest restroom. When I accepted the assignment, my first questions were not “What do we film?” or “Whom do we interview?” but “Where do I go to the bathroom?” This called for a plan.

Plan A: Don’t drink anything for 12 hours before the film shoot. Doctors put patients on this program before surgery and, best I can tell, nobody dies of dehydration.

Plan B: Drink water as needed but stop at every rest area, McDonald’s, Wendy’s and now, Starbucks, along the way to use the facilities, thus preparing for the long trail stretches when I’ll be stranded.

Plan C, and this is where things start to get tricky: Prepare like a grownup and wear the big-girl pants, aka Poise pads and such. I’m recalling a certain astronaut who, not wanting to make restroom stops on her long drive to Florida to allegedly harass the woman who stole her man, suited up in this way. Her special panties became a key plot point in her police report.

And if they’re good enough for an accomplished (albeit troubled) scientist, they’re good enough for me. And so, when I arrived in the leafy, sun-and-gnat-dappled wilderness of the Confluence area, I was almost astronaut-like in my preparation for the long day ahead. I was wearing a Poise pad. I’d driven the 75 miles feeling as though I was sitting in a booster seat.

And here’s the thing, because I did Plan A and did not drink anything, I arrived on location parched and dry and not really needing Plans B or C.

But after a long day in the sun, I realized I would not be able to deny myself water all summer long. Nor did I want to go the astronaut-lingerie route. Therefore, I would have to devise Plan D, also known as the Man Up Plan.

In which I approach the problem as the men on the team do. I promise you not a one of them gave a moment’s thought to this topic-they just excuse themselves and walk away behind a tree. Standing there on the trail, I plotted my bathroom escape. To my right was a sheer cliff drop into the river. (Rushing water, the sound of which doesn’t help matters, if you get my drift.) To my left was a cliff up the hillside. I would not be able to get far enough into the woods to relieve myself in leafy privacy.

“Tell the guys to turn around and then just go,” said my friend, also a producer who is working on her own wilderness film this summer.

And so that is what I will do. I will drink water with impunity, will speed past rest areas with carefree abandon, and will leave my special undergarments at home.

This summer, I shall be one of the guys. Just don’t look.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.

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