Living dry in Alaska, or "How I learned to love the public restroom"

Our little cabin has character.  That is to say that your friend has great "personality".  She's got her own sort of beauty.  One that you have to really appreciate, and once you do, you don't want to leave.  The floor to the cabin is cattywhomped and as my roommate described it "It's only straight when you're drunk".  But it's been home for the past couple of weeks (after vacating the crazies' house).  The Whiskey Tango Hotel has been and is one of the more unique and wonderful places I have lived.

The Whiskey Tango Hotel and my roommates

View from the second story balcony--complete with a mason jar

It has no running water.  It is a "dry cabin".  A term which seemed unusual to me.  So much so that I had to look it up to make sure that these dry cabins weren't so far out in the boondocks I couldn't bike to work.  They're very common up here in Alaska, apparently.  The -20 to -60 F winters make running water silly in most places not immediately hooked up to town.  The toilets actually have heated water in places hooked up to city water so the pipes don't freeze.  So, there's a hole covered by a toilet seat inside a 3-walled room outside of our cabin for us to drop trow in.

Notice I mentioned 3-walled.  There's no door.  In fact, there was no covering on the window that looked directly into the outhouse either.  Its got a picture of a frog with a saying that's almost witty the first time you read it and a little bit of graffiti I can mostly make out referring to a mask for when the house falls into the water (permafrost?).  We have to boil water on the stove to wash dishes.  We add the boiling water to the basin of cold water and add soap.  We have a rinsing dish that ends up as soapy as the washing container by the end of it.

Our fire pit outside the cabin.  We tend not to take pictures of behind the house.  It probably has something to do with the outhouse not having a door....

View of our driveway from our second story.  The driveway has obligate wetland plants in it (Beckmannia syzigachne).

Most of our crew showers at work.  Most or half bike to work.  All of us biked to work until my roommates and I moved for our sanity (safety?) to this cabin which is something like 15 miles to work.  Which isn't bad one-way, but I haven't biked 30 miles in a day before, after a day of field work.  Two or three of my coworkers make that kind of commute and hats off to them.  Considering I hadn't ridden a bicycle in 10 years save the two-weeks before I went to Alaska, I consider my biking ability about average, but certainly not exceptional.

So I tend to shower at work, not every day, but at least once a week.  We're camping for work now Monday through Thursday and I we get fancy dirt tans that wash off during the weekend.  We take whore-baths in between (wash basin and a cloth) to get our faces and arms or hands.  I've enjoyed my short-short haircut because I can wash my hair this way too.

Back to public restrooms.  It's so great to be able to "make a deposit" as my coworker would say in a restroom with a flush and a place to wash hands immediately.  I get excited when we're out in town and I think, not with dread at a public restroom, but excitedly that we're in a town and this bathroom is going to flush!  It's even going to have regular soap and not hand sanitizer!  A lot of out-houses really just make you want to find a tree and pop a squat, or dig a cat-hole.

An out-house done right keeps the lid shut and vents from the outside or behind.  Only about half of the ones I've seen are like this.  More recently, some omit any kind of lid and are just a bench (single person) with a hole cut in them with only mesh at the top of the building for ventilation.

My coworker mentioned that with a little less permafrost and a little higher population, it'd be easy to see a tragedy of the commons unfold in real-time over human waste in Fairbanks.  I don't think he was far off; groundwater contamination or developing country diseases don't seem to entice many people.    

Shaving is a luxury for those with running water or a steady hand and patience with a basin.  It's easy to see why the old men look like Santa Clause (ps--we're about 10 miles NE of North Pole, AK) and the womens' hair makes them look like hippies, even when they're not.  It's just too tough to keep shaven, especially, I assume, in the winter.  We use a lot less water having to haul it in at 1.4c / gallon.  We at least have a truck of our roommates to use to haul water in while our co-worker puts a few gallons in a bag he wears riding his bicycle.

Living simply has been, not an escape or retreat, but a pleasure I wish everyone could have.  While getting internet requires a lot of planning, and I will return home with an unappreciated respect (excitement?) for public restrooms, the quiet tap of rain on the tin roof while reading a book and occasionally poking at a fire is well worth peeing in the woods.