Hi! I'm Grace Evans and this is Dry Spell, my weekly letter of off-season reflections on canoeing. I took a week off because I had shingles but I’m all healed up now!
I was looking for firewood in the brush on Little Oxtongue River when I came across a striking white mushroom. Growing straight up, it was small, spongey, and tube-like. I crouched to examine the exterior ridges. There was a variety of wild mushrooms in the backcountry. I was drawn to tiny clusters, perched on tree roots or sprouting from damp leaves. Walking on I saw a flash of bright teal. Plastic. It was a tampon wrapper. Then a white applicator, a few feet away. I turned around and confirmed it; my mushroom was an unused tampon, swollen with water.
There was less littered garbage than I expected in Algonquin last year, especially since I explored the busiest backcountry corridor at the height of summer, during a year the park saw record numbers. But I was surprised that the majority of what I saw was garbage from menstrual products: wrappers, applicators, discarded blood-soaked products, even underwear.
On the way home from one trip I ducked into the brush to pee at the Canoe Lake portage, one of the busiest in the park. Under the tree cover I was surrounded by fluttering jewel-tone wrappers, scattered over the pine needles.
Women are still underrepresented in outdoor recreation. When I researched for my first trips, I found detailed information about backcountry menstruating if I searched specifically for it, but most general guides and pack lists were written by men, and many didn’t mention it.
Carrying around a container of used pads or tampons for days is unappealing even if you and your tripping group are comfortable with the blood. But it’s important; pads and tampons take hundreds of years to decompose. Burying or tossing them in a thunderbox isn’t a good option. (Users of menstrual cups however can simply empty their blood into a thunderbox, or bury it six inches deep.) I feel both disappointed and angry in people who leave behind their menstrual garbage, but also empathetic. I experience the outdoors in a gendered way so I can imagined the conditions that might create this issue.
I didn’t actually bleed during either of the trips I took, but my group collected the garbage we found and packed it out it with us. Although, I left the beautiful white tampon-mushroom because I was in the woods without a plastic bag to retrieve it with. I think about it sometimes, sitting there through the seasons; maybe real fungus will sprout and overtake it, help it to decompose.
Links:
“Will you be sick during the time of the trip?”: Such a good read from Jessica Dunkin about how periods used to prevent full participation in summer camp activities. “ ‘Under the weather’ functioned as a euphemism for menstruation, and menstruating girls, at least at some summer camps, were prohibited from participating in canoe trips. Mary and Maria subjected their adolescent bodies to icy baths in an attempt to alter their monthly cycles and gain access to a much-coveted camp experience, the canoe trip.” [NiCHE]
Backpacking with Your Period: An informative practical guide. “…it’s no big deal. And you can rest easy that the old notion that bears are attracted to menstrual blood turns out to be a myth.” [REI]
Planes, paddles and portages: a journey of garbage: Some park rangers documented their journey to collect garbage left in Algonquin backcountry. [Ontario Parks]
Thanks for reading Dry Spell!