“Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch”

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

I come from a family of flush toilet users. Here in America, this is not much of an admission or surprise. But what does surprise me is that even my Mom who was born in 1933 always had a flush toilet! Somehow I thought that along with her stories of the entire family sleeping in the kitchen by the wood stove during January nights, that they would also somehow have harbored untold tales of creeping out in the middle of the night to the outhouse, complete with the moon shaped air hole on the door. But she grew up in Salem, Massachusetts and by then many of the cities had become modernized, or as some would say, “civilized.”

But being “civilized” is a matter of perspective, as well as choice. If being “civilized” assumes having an advanced or or humane culture, then using flush toilets just does not live up to this description. Is it advanced to dump what could serve the earth into the sea and create levels of bacteria that infiltrate the entire fish population? Is it humane to send it all to a sewer treatment plant where toxic chemicals fill the air for the local population to breath into their lungs while out for an evening walk? When I lived in Salem myself I witnessed both the toxity of the water and air because of our inability as a culture to deal in an advanced, humane way with our excretions.

I contemplate such things now as I settle in to a life dedicated to composting my poop. It’s a funny idea that is abhorrent to many. I think many would be horrified to sit on the homemade seat that hovers over the bucket in the shed adjacent to the yurt I am living in. Our culture seems to create sterile places where we can wisk away the things we’d rather not talk about or see, certainly not smell. The idea of actually choosing to go back to the old way of doing things before the supposed progress of porcelain and plumbing must seem to many backward and bizarre.

But to me it comes as a return to the sacred. I come to this led by my love for the earth and her creatures and with a desire that all I do be in balance with the ways of the land. For me an advanced and humane culture would consider the needs of the earth before doing anything. Like in Starhawk’s wonderful book, The Fifth Sacred Thing, a truly advanced culture would honor the four sacred things of air, fire, water and earth, and in doing so create the fifth, which is spirit.

Two years ago, I was introduced to how simple humanure composting could be when my partner and his son and I camped for the summer in the White Mountains, staying on land in which they utilized the bucket system. No $1000 composting toilet needed, just a bucket, some sawdust or leaves and a dedicated pile. I was especially surprised how the sawdust so effectively took care of the smell and how once I got used to it, even dumping the buckets became not disgusting to me, but a service for the community and for the earth.

I’ve fallen into this way of being quite easily and think it strange now that what will feed the walnut, pear and apple trees on this land I live in is considered waste by too many. I also find it strange that much of what is considered “civilized” today does damage to the planet’s brilliant beauty and our own ability ultimately to live sustainably. I am enjoying the idea of feeding the plants that feed us from out of my own body. Nothing is wasted. Everything about me is sacred.