DATE: SUMMER 2023 | LOCATION: THE PLACE / TENT / LOVABLE LOO

Field Scrawl was probably never meant to be read like a polished nature book.

The first proper reading room at the place was the Lovable Loo.

Before the barn was finished, I lived here in a canvas tent. Two sixteen-by-twenty tarps were pitched over it so that during downpours the inside stayed dry. Inside were the things that made the summer workable: a queen bed, chairs, a stove, a refrigerator, a Goal Zero battery, and solar panels to keep the camp running.

Summer 2023 camp at the place: canvas tent under the pitched tarp, with the barn still ahead of completion.

Chris would come up and visit. I worked on the barn from there.

That was the contrast. Battery, solar panels, refrigerator, and a five-gallon pail toilet.

Solar panels outside the tent. Battery, panels, refrigerator — and a five-gallon pail toilet.

The toilet was simple. A bag lined the pail. Sawdust went in the bottom and over the top after use. Solids only. No urine. Cover what was dropped with a layer of sawdust and there was no odor.

The Lovable Loo: five-gallon pail, seat, roof, side panels, and woods around it. Simple enough to work.

The problem was keeping enough sawdust.

I did not have a shop pile of it sitting around, so I used compressed sawdust bio bricks, the same kind I burned as fuel while winter camping with the wood stove. I called them Pez tablets because that is what they looked like to me, except each one was about the size of a loaf of bread.

Compressed sawdust bio bricks, the Pez tablets that became the sawdust supply for the Loo.

One brick, soaked overnight in a five-gallon pail, made enough loose sawdust to keep the system working.

That was the setup: tent, tarps, battery, solar panels, barn work, and a Lovable Loo supplied by rehydrated Pez tablets.

So if Field Scrawl ever becomes a binder, it does not need to pretend to be something grander than it is. It can be a stack of short records kept at the place, read one at a time, close to the work and close to the weather.

A page or two at the Lovable Loo would be about the right pace.