I was in a good place. I was having a good time. I was living like a wildling, sleeping on the ground in the forest by night and rambling through a nation of personalities by day. I felt like someone who lived on the earth, connected intimately with the planet, communing with the stars as they twinkled me to sleep by night.

I was just outside of Nevada City, California with a roving convoy of amigos and we had a few days to camp on a friends 5 acres of sleepable land.

“Roar!!!!” I would say in the mornings from a lookout rock where I pounded my chest and lit the sacred smoke.

”Am I man or animal?” The woods took my question into its fold of bird noises, insect rustling, and leaves that voiced the wind.

Every morning, I’d find myself a quiet corner in the scenery and drink tea, practice Tibetan Yoga, and then settle into a productive hour of polishing my novel, “The Release of Jerry the Hamster.”

The week before I spent in San Francisco promoting my new book All the Beloved Known Things.

The contrast between the city and this bucolic, vagabond existence glowed like a distant city below the ridge of my thoughts.

I thought about my time in cities and the difficulty of maintaining a quiet place where my mind was in that sweet flow of writerly progress. I was fully grasping the significance of setting the right conditions for The Work of The Writer to happen.

“The crowd will make you long for time with yourself, and time with yourself will make you long for time with the crowd.” Seneca the Elder had written and since I’d read that in college I repeated this phrase to explain the dichotomy my energies seemed to flow between.

As these thoughts flowed, so did my digestive tract. In the woods, everywhere is a toilet or bed—it’s your choice.

So I found a suitable place. Before commencing, I searched for some soft leaves to carry out the final bit. Being the forrest, seemingly suitable shrubs abounded. I looked at a patch of particularly soft leaves. I did a check—definitely not poison oak or poison ivy.

But no one told me about poison sumac.

Poison sumac, or Toxicodendron vernix, means toxic tree in Latin, and that’s what it feels like on your skin.

It inhabits swamps and other wet areas as well as pinewoods and hardwood forests. I was in a hardwood forest, so in prime position for a run in (rub in?) with this toxic tree. I could blame the sacred smoke, but that would exonerate the real culprit, the strange chaos I seem to attract.

Lest you pity the fool, I tell you I still had an amazing day that day. Because poison sumac, like invasive swamp creatures, take their time before moving in and throwing themselves a welcome to the neighborhood party.

The Next Poison Sumac Day

The next day it was uncomfortable to sit and be a human, which was unfortunate since it was a day to drive 4 hours to San Francisco with my human body trapped in a car.

Let’s break the narrative structure . Here are some notes.

1. Even Daniel Boon used toilet paper

2. “Just because you know what something isn’t, doesn’t mean you know what it is” — Poison Sumac Butt Monster

3. Do not scratch, it only makes it worse

4. Warm baths are nice.

5. Seriously—how the hell did you allow this to happen to you? You are like an oversized salamander flopping about chaotically on the sunburned shore! Where are your parents?

6. Remember to delete the selfies you took of your butt. You took these selfies because you lacked a proper mirror and needed to assess the situation. But in the future, if you show people photos of your trip to California, you don’t want these photos to reappear out of context. These photos will be hard to explain…

7. Warm baths are really so nice. Too bad you can’t live in a bathtub. Eventually, you’ll have to come out salamander and return to the staggeringly itchy world.

8. Use the discomfort as a mindfulness practice?

9. Every time you think you want to scratch, you can remember to be happy to be alive.

The Full Poison Sumac Experience

I only made it to Life in the Boy Scouts. I’m claiming Eagle now. This might seem unfair for those who do the work to obtain Eagle in the old fashion way. But think about it this way: Given the choice between all that work and wiping your butt with poison sumac, most would still choose the former. Thus, I’ve achieved Eagle Scout!

Takeaways:

Some people suffer extreme reactions from poison Sumac—fortunately my reaction was on the lower end of the scale. For that, I thank the lucky stars I slept so peacefully under in the forest I still feel beneath me on seat 36B on a plane to my next stop, Alaska, where I will use toilet paper, the softest most gentle toilet paper I can find.

So remember you wildling, toilet paper need not detract from your wilderness experience and might just save you from an experience no human ought to go through.