Jeff Baker, of the Oregonian newspaper, writes, “A few years ago, some geographers attempted to find the most remote place in the continental United States.  “Most remote” was defined as the farthest from a road.  After some serious cartography, a winner was declared: the Thorofare, an area at the extreme southeast corner of Yellowstone National Park.”

“I was surprised,” says author Gary Ferguson.  “I was sure it’d be someplace in Nevada.”  Ferguson was even more surprised to learn that the farthest he or anyone else in the lower 48 can get from a road is just 28 miles.  “One very long day’s walk,” Ferguson writes in Hawk’s Rest.  “It’s not that we’ve lost our wild places.  Rather that they no longer spill into unbroken quarters.  Preserves that had been at the heart of vast, unfettered sprawls of land are now for the most part turning into islands.”
    
National Geographic asked Ferguson to spend some time in the Thorofare and write about what he saw.  Last summer he and a friend took off from his home in Red Lodge, Montana, and hiked 140 miles to Hawks Rest, and old guard station two miles south of that most remote place.  Ferguson spent six weeks there, doing a little wolf and grizzly bear observation, but most seeing what there was to see.  What was there to see?

“Plenty,” Fergusan said, laughing.  “It was remarkably busy.  At times it felt more like Grand Central Station than this incredibly remote spot.  About 800 people passed through in the time I was there.”  800 people in six weeks at the most remote place in the lower 48!

So?

So this is the absolute proof that global population growth is causing severe strain on the planet.  When this many people appear at the most remote spot in the United States (“at times it looked like Grand Central Station”), it means we’re running out of physical territory in which to recreate, to regroup, even to think.  It means that if we don’t accept full responsibility for our own body waste, these former pristine places will look much like a slum in Chicago.

The entire purpose for the Ultralight Wilderness Toilet Co to exist is to begin the process of teaching our children to take responsibility for their own body waste.  To no longer feel ashamed because what comes out of their bodies happens to have a foul smell.  Garbage of all kinds has a foul smell.  We already have 6-year old children who have accepted responsibility for their own body waste while camping - even when there’s a toilet just down the road.  Many won’t even go camping without their PACKIT TOILET KIT.  Please DO NOT hesitate to initiate a conversation with your children about this subject.  For there is mounting evidence that the global sanitation crisis is far greater to the survival of mankind than the threat of global warming.