My belief is that there’s a work-around for everything. Just because something is hard or you can’t do it at one point, doesn’t mean that it can’t be done. I like to tell this to my patients at work. My goal as an Occupational Therapist is to help them problem solve and figure out a way to do the things that they love despite their impairments.

This summer, as I recover from my ileostomy revision, I’m having to do a lot of creative problem solving myself to enjoy the outdoors and exercising. At the beginning of Summer, my plan was to enjoy car camping, easy hikes, and road trips and be happy with where I’m at. Then, Tyler started talking about new gear, and I started to think more about what was possible.

Both Tyler and a co-worker enlightened me on the concept of using a Fast Pack for outdoor pursuits (To me, fast packing is a new-fangled term for ultralight backpacking). Tyler was talking about his own fast packing goals for the summer, and my co-worker told me about climbing and hiking with her pack. That’s when my gears started churning. Could I figure out a way to go backpacking THIS Summer?

Turns out, I could. And I did! Last week, Tyler and I loaded up our new Ultimate Direction Fast Pack 25s to determine if we could actually pull off a short backpacking trip over the weekend. He had to make a couple of adjustments to his pack to strap the tent on the bottom, but we were able to pack everything we needed with Tyler’s pack weighing about 20 pounds and mine about 10 pounds (give or take food and water). Tyler had the tent, stove, food, and water filter. I only had to carry my personal gear.  My goal was to keep my pack around 10 pounds to decrease stress on my abdomen.

Since the Kenai looked to have the best weather forecast, we headed out for Carter Lake on Saturday. I’ve never been on the Carter Lake Trail, and I have no idea why. It’s so easy to access from the road and the trail is very straight-forward. I did take my time in the first mile or so because it is quite steep right out of the parking lot. Once the trail flattened out, we found our campsite around 2.3 miles in and set up camp, so that we could decrease the weight of our packs even more. We were then free to wander the landscape, and ended up hiking about 8-10 miles overall. We even took a canoe out for a spin (a short-lived jaunt as the wind picked up and we were nervous about paddling being too hard for me right now).  Back at camp, I enjoyed reading, listening to the birds, and hiding from the mosquitos. The next morning, we packed up and hiked down the trail in time to call our East Coast dads for Father’s Day.

BONUS: A note on outdoor toileting with an ostomy:

In packing for the trip, I brought a trowel to dig cat holes, so that I could empty my poop into the holes rather than carrying it out and adding more weight to my pack (for those who don’t know, liquid poop adds up and can way a shit ton). Turns out, I didn’t need the trowel because this campsite had a pit toilet. I opted to stand to empty my ostomy because the cleanliness of the seat was questionable. Usually I sit on a toilet seat and empty. If you have an ostomy and want to get out camping again, finding a campsite with and outhouse or pit toilet can be a good way to start. It makes things a lot easier and less stressful than figuring out how to empty your ostomy outdoors for the first time.