Blood Sweat Tears

The Red Bibler Tent by Bethany Adams

A Period of Transition by Maggie Seymour

Out of Order by Saryn Schwartz

Unstoppable Flow by Holly Priestly

Trails for My Daughter by Sarah Thomas

A Blood Offering to the Mountain by Cecilia Castillo Saldivar

Bleeding Thru by Katie Houston

Soar by Lauren Jones

the red bibler tent

Behind a large rock, I squatted and bent my head to observe the color of my pee. A red drop fell. 

What? I quickly did the math. My period was a week early. 

Fuck, I muttered and, while peeing, reached into the top of my day pack for a wad of toilet paper. I tore off a piece, folded it in my hand, and cupped it into place. Then I hitched up my underwear and trekking pants. 

At that moment, my period supplies were zipped into a blue duffel bag, strapped on the back of a mule, trotting their way to Aconcagua base camp. The toilet paper would have to suffice until I could catch up with them. Under the midday Argentina sun, I returned to where the other members of my climbing team, all men, were taking a short break alongside the beaten trail, and said nothing about this new development. It’s not like any of them would have had a pad or tampon. Instead, I clipped my pack around my waist and told our expedition leader, Tim, that I would go ahead to base camp to scout for some tent sites.

 I wanted to retrieve my pads as soon as possible.

Okay, he said. Just take your time adjusting to the altitude. 

I will, I promised, before heading toward the snow-covered massif of Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Americas, measuring in at 22,837 feet. Our team of seven was self-organized by Tim, who had an impressive mountain resume with summits of Everest, Kanchenjunga, Denali, and Aconcagua and expeditions to K2 and Lhotse. Tim and I had grown up in the same small town in central New York, on neighboring family farms, which shared a property line. Since he was fifteen years older, we didn’t really get to know each other until I was in my twenties and pursuing a life with mountains as the focus. 

After completing an undergraduate degree in environmental studies, I had taken on a job as a wilderness therapy instructor in the rugged Adirondack Mountains, living out of my backpack every other week. When I completed my master’s degree, I became a college instructor, leading students on immersive backcountry experiences.

Through the hometown grapevine, Tim had heard about some of my adventures and asked me to be his strong second on Aconcagua. I took the responsibility to help him guide one of the Seven Summits seriously because I wanted to expand my own climbing resume before leading a team to Denali the following year. My expedition skills were strong, but I’d never been to extreme altitude, which is classified as anything over 18,000 feet. I wanted to experience that on a less technical mountain before journeying to the deep crevasses and sheer slopes of Denali. 

I’d been to high and very high altitude multiple times on expeditions to Ecuador, Nepal, the Cascades, and the Sierra Nevada and had never had any issues within that range of 5,000 to 15,000 feet, so I felt pretty confident coming into Aconcagua. Even with that confidence, I took the acclimatization process seriously. The night before we started our expedition, I abstained from drinking wine in Mendoza with the rest of the team and focused only on water and electrolytes. Competitive by nature, I wanted to show my teammates just how capable I was. It didn’t help that I was the only woman on my team and felt it was my responsibility to make a physical statement for an often underrepresented and misunderstood gender on mountain expeditions. My acclimatization strategy paid off, and the previous night at Camp Confluencia, located at 11,122 feet, my oxygen levels were the highest of those in the group: 100 percent when measured with a pulse oximeter. 

As I trekked alone to base camp, I felt the warm gush of blood every now and then and hoped it was hitting the toilet paper wad instead of my underwear. My lower back ached slightly, from period pain and from hiking with a pack. I clapped my hands with excitement when the yellow expedition tents of Plaza de Mulas base camp came into view. My pace quickened and I passed a sign announcing the elevation of 14,400 feet, almost the same as Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States. 

In base camp, international climbers nodded their heads as they passed me. All were men. I returned their nods and tossed back my shoulders, to give my five-foot-eight frame another inch. It stoked my competitive flames to know that I was the only person on my team, or it seemed on any of the teams on the mountain, who would have to navigate the logistics of bleeding for four days at altitude. I could have my period and still be the first into base camp. Now I just had to find my bag. 

At the cook tents, I was directed by a young man to a nearby dome shelter that housed all the duffel bags brought to camp by the mules.

There you are! I cheered when I found it amid the pile of mostly yellow North Face ones and hoisted it over my shoulder. At an open tent site, I unzipped the side compartment in search of a heavy-flow maxi pad. My system for periods in the backcountry was simple: I used pads. With a regular cycle, I packed a total of eight—one for each day, one for each night. It was during my years as a wilderness therapy instructor that I began wearing pads consistently instead of tampons. The students in the program were provided a plastic bag full of pads of various sizes, referred to as a fem kit. I began using the same system so that when my students complained about not being able to have tampons, I could say, I use the fem kit too and it’s safer to use pads on long expeditions because we don’t always have reliable ways to wash our hands.

After my wilderness instructor days, I continued using the fem kit. There was something about shedding my blood upon the ground that felt symbolic, ceremonial, and incredibly natural. To me, red blood on red leaves, white snow, or palomino-colored desert sand was beautiful.

The latrine at base camp was a large structure made of sheet metal with a front door that rattled when opened. Inside, I found a clean and luxurious pit toilet, fully stocked with toilet paper and hand sanitizer. It helped that the climbing season on Aconcagua was about to end so the population of base camp was low. Our expedition was one of the last that would be on the mountain. Still, I raised my neck gaiter up around my nostrils, sat over the oval hole, and tossed the wad of bloody toilet paper down into the abyss. 

My bowels grumbled and the period diarrhea began. Over the years of expedition life, I had observed that my bowels were looser at altitude and when I got my period. Now, I had the lovely combination of the two. In addition, I’d been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, a chronic disease of the large intestines, when I was ten. The whole host of gastrointestinal issues that came along with my diagnosis had ironically been a major factor in why I felt so at home in the outdoor field. Everyone had poop stories from bad water or bad food and had more than likely shit their pants at some point on an expedition. Though ulcerative colitis was much more complicated than awkward poop stories, in the mountains it could be something to bond over, rather than something wrong with me. And that had been healing for my younger self.

After my trip to the latrine, I washed my hands at a faucet near the mess tents and popped two Imodium. As I returned to my tent site, my teammates entered base camp. 

Hey! I waved them over to where our bags were, so we could begin the process of setting up camp. My teammates broke off into pairs and found empty tent sites close to mine. I challenged myself to be the first one set up. Working solo, I moved swiftly to unroll my one-person Bibler tent. With my trail runners, I pushed rocks aside to make space for the tent. Then I snapped the poles into place and inched them through the fabric. Once the tent was erected, I attempted to drive the stakes into the ground, but it was so hard that even using a rock as a hammer hardly made a dent. I was forced to tie the stakes to strands of paracord and secure large rocks atop them. 

When I was done arranging gear inside my tent, I glanced around to see if I had won my secret game. I had. Everyone else was still looking for rocks to fasten their stakes. Inwardly congratulating myself, I sat down on a large rock. The landscape before me was jagged and dry with hues of green and gray. The opening of my tent faced east and to the west the sun blazed over the imposing summit of Aconcagua. 

Bethany, can you help me set up our mess tent? Tim asked.

Sure, I said. When I stood up, my vision blurred, and I felt a hot pain in my abdomen. Uh, I have to go to the bathroom first, I called to Tim. I made it back to the latrine just in time for another bout of diarrhea to unleash its fury. 

My head throbbed and I cradled it between my hands. It unnerved me that I was losing blood and liquids at the same time. Ten minutes crawled by before I found enough strength to lift myself off the pit latrine and return to my tent. 

Tim came over to ask if I was okay. 

Yeah, I lied.

Why don’t you lie down in your tent, and I’ll send Paul over? You probably have a bit of altitude sickness, Tim said. 

I agreed, then crawled into my tent. For one person, the Bibler was spacious. My sleeping pad and bag lay on one side and my clothes were folded on the other. My body started to cool from the lack of movement, so I zipped a fleece over my green polypro top. I lay on top of my sleeping bag with my eyes closed. Paul, our team doctor, arrived a few minutes later and knelt near my head at the entrance of the tent.

Hey, Bethany, I heard you weren’t feeling too good, he said.

Yep, I said, still wearing my sun hat and sunglasses.

What’s going on? he asked.

I’m having diarrhea, I slurred. Each word was hard to enunciate, and I felt drunk. 

When did it start? he asked.

When I got my period, I said. Which I knew wasn’t entirely true. I got my period first, then I hiked to base camp, rushed around, and got hit with some harsh diarrhea and altitude sickness. 

Oh, I’m sorry about that, he said. 

I pried one of my eyes open beneath my sunglasses to see that Paul’s face was forlorn. He looked at me like I had just lost a beloved pet or something. If I hadn’t felt so miserable, I would have laughed. Okay, I had my period, but wasn’t it obvious that I was suffering from altitude sickness? And that was the much more serious issue? 

While Paul assessed my vitals, I wanted to say: You see, Paul, sometimes high altitude brings on menstruation cycles early and I got my period today, a whole week before it was scheduled to arrive. And it’s too bad that we as a society don’t talk more openly about periods or I might have actually remembered to carry a pad on me. Instead, I packed all my pads in the duffel bag that the mules carried. Then, I hiked into camp too quickly because I needed my pads. Now, I have diarrhea and mild altitude sickness. And I’m concerned about getting dehydrated. Oh, and I have ulcerative colitis that I’m afraid will flare up. On top of that, I want to appear strong and capable and have a hard time asking for help.

But I had no energy to string together that many words, so I summed it up as, I get bad diarrhea with my period.

Okay, I have some pills for that—his voice perked up—the diarrhea part. 

Paul dug into his medicine kit, placed a full water bottle with electrolytes by my head, and dropped two small white pills in my hand. I curled over onto my side and popped them into my mouth. I tasted their bitter coating as soon as they made contact with my tongue. I took a swig of water. The whole process of rolling over and swallowing liquid sent waves of nausea through me. I groaned, lay back down, and closed my eyes.

That should help slow the diarrhea, he said. Keep hydrating, that will help too.

Okay, I said and held up my thumb. The sound of his boots crunching against the gravel as he walked away hurt my hair. The afternoon dragged on in small repetitive movements. I’d open my eyes and look at the ceiling of my tent. Then I’d close them. I’d have to use the latrine. Then I’d wash my hands and lie back down. I’d drink from my water bottle. Then I’d do it all over again. Hours went by and the brightness of the sun softened. Amber light fell upon my sleeping bag. 

By the end of the day, the temperature had started to fall. I wrapped my sleeping bag around my shoulders. Then I traded my sun hat and sunglasses for a knit cap and headlamp. My headache subsided and I didn’t feel the urge to use the bathroom anymore. In the entrance of my tent, I placed my journal upon my knee and wrote, Day 3, I got my period.

My pencil tapped against the paper as I looked out at the horizon line of jagged peaks illuminated by pink light. I felt an empty homesickness. Maybe that’s why I had told Paul earlier that I had my period—I wanted to share those words with someone, even if it was a man. I wanted someone to know what I was going through. Even if Paul had never had a period, perhaps I could explain it to him. Not only the blood that flows out, but the emotions too. To my teammates, I wanted to appear strong, confident, and capable. But smoldering underneath my competitive nature was a fire to represent women who had been left off mountain expeditions simply because of their menstrual cycles. Though what really stoked the flames was knowing how some women were still mistreated around the world for simply being women.

 I thought of a book I had read in high school called The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant. In the book, which takes place during biblical times, the red tent is a place where women are sent when they have their periods or are about to give birth. Away from men, in the privacy of the tent, they learn what it means to be in a woman’s body and the responsibilities that come from that. It’s where they gossip, laugh, and pass down the secrets of womanhood to the next generation. Two decades later, I still recalled one of the scenes quite vividly, where a young girl experiences her period for the first time and sees the blood drip upon the desert sand. I felt like that girl today.

I also remembered a time in 2018, when I led a group of American students to Nepal to study environmental and social justice issues with a college in Kathmandu. Before we left the country, I met with my female students to brief them about having their periods in Nepal. It was like our own red tent meeting.

Bring your own products and keep them concealed. Make sure anything you throw away is securely wrapped in toilet paper, I’d said.

Once in Nepal, we trekked to Ghorepani, a remote mountain village around 9,000 feet with panoramic views of the Annapurna range. Early one morning, I stopped on a walk to sit on a concrete step to stretch and take in the sunrise. Before sitting down, I surveyed the ground for leeches, which were prevalent in May right before the monsoon season. When I returned to the teahouse where we were staying, an older Nepali woman grabbed my arm and pulled me aside. She didn’t speak any English, so she just pointed to the blood on the back of my trekking pants.

Oh, leeches, I groaned. She continued to scowl at me. I realized there was no point trying to communicate what had really happened, so I went to my room and changed my pants. Any sort of blood on the butt cheek would be viewed as period blood and that was highly taboo. While we were in Nepal, three young girls died from exposure in menstruation huts. Though not a common practice anymore in most Nepali communities, menstruation huts stemmed from the same principle as the red tent—secluding women while they bled. 

I heard a pair of boots approach my tent.

Come try to eat something, Tim said.

I’m not hungry, I said. 

It will help you recover.

Okay. I set my journal aside and walked over to the small kitchen tent. There I sat with my teammates on rolled-out ground pads. 

Feeling better? Paul asked.

Yes, much better. I sipped on a cup of salty chicken broth. 

You know, Paul leaned in to whisper, you’re much tougher than all of us because you are a woman.

Oh, I know, I agreed. 

After another helping of chicken broth and ramen noodles, I excused myself from the circle of expedition stories and returned to the privacy of my red tent. I usually enjoyed adventurous mountain stories, but today I longed for a woman to laugh with and commiserate about period stories.

That night, a full, red-tinted moon rose over the Andes Mountains. Under the moonlit summit of Aconcagua, I peed on the hard ground and unashamedly left a red stain. I appreciated that my body was tied to one of the most reliable cycles of nature. Not only would I climb this mountain, I’d do it with my period. I would dedicate that to all the women who’d gone before me, who were just as strong and capable as I, but who didn’t get invited on the expedition. And to all the women around the world who were still sitting in their own red tents for four days and nights without the proper care and support they needed. How I wished I could share my Bibler tent with them.

On the second day of my menstrual cycle, I rested and read books in base camp. On the third, the team and I did a carry to camp one. Then on the fourth, we relocated to camp one. With that, the latrine and garbage cans were left behind. Now I had a black plastic bag to poop in. The Bibler tent also remained at base camp, and I had to give up the privacy and sanctity of my red tent. Now I’d be sharing a tent with Tim and his teenage son, Henry. It wasn’t ideal, but as we progressed up the mountain, we needed to live in a more compact space to stay warm and ease camp duties. Tim and I had discussed this during one of our expedition preparation phone calls, and because he was a friend of the family, I felt the most comfortable tenting with him and Henry. 

 Statistically speaking, it would have been hard to find another woman to share a tent with on a high-mountain expedition. Believe me, I had tried my hardest to recruit another female, with no luck. Women’s participation in the sport was much less than men’s. I’d been on the Aconcagua expedition for six days now and had spoken to only one other woman—a member of a British team I met in base camp. Unfortunately, sharing a tent with men is another taboo that has kept women off mountain expeditions, and consequently the first summits of every 8,000-meter peak in the world were made by teams of men. Because of the self-care needed inside the protective walls of a tent, men and women sharing that space can be perceived as scandalous if they are not in a romantic relationship. Changing clothing and going to the bathroom become all the more difficult when privacy from tentmates is required. 

Camp one, around 16,000 feet, was much colder and more exposed than base camp. The first night we were there, the wind barreled down from the upper mountain and rattled our tent. I put in earbuds so that I could fall asleep. Midway through the night, I awoke with the urge to urinate. While the men on my expedition could stay in their sleeping bags and use their pee bottles during the night, I could not. Nor did I feel comfortable squatting over a Nalgene in the corner of the tent while two people slept beside me. Reluctantly, I unzipped my sleeping bag and bit my lip in envy for the ease male bodies have on mountain expeditions. The cold absorbed me as soon as I emerged from my sleeping bag. I yanked my puffy jacket over my polypro top. From the bottom of my sleeping bag, I grabbed my inner boots, hat, and gloves, which I slept with to keep them warm.

I was met with a howling gust of wind as I scrambled out of the tent and clicked on my headlamp. With my head down, I made my way to one of the large rocks that I’d been using as a pee area. Suddenly, the wind stopped and the night was completely still. I pulled back my hood, clicked off my headlamp, and looked up into the night sky. Any anger, envy, or resentment toward the men warm in their sleeping bags dissipated. Above me, the stars were like none I had ever seen before. The edges of the mountains formed dark silhouettes against a sky of glittery light. It seemed every night that the waning gibbous moon lost more of its illumination, another layer of stars emerged. 

My bleeding was complete, and I removed the last pad from my underwear lining, rolled it up, and disposed of it in my fem kit bag. When the next full moon appeared in the sky, I would bleed again. Just as I clicked on my headlamp to return to my tent, another urge hit me. This one sharp and forceful. The diarrhea that had begun in base camp had not slowed, even with a steady dose of Imodium. Unable to retrieve my black poop bag in time, I squatted, and a liquid stream of mostly dehydrated meals screamed out of me. If having explosive diarrhea wasn’t bad enough, the very moment I began pooping, the wind picked back up. 

Fuck! I tried to move my foot before a spray of diarrhea landed against it. But it was too late. 

Ugh.

This was a first for me in my adult life. Never before had I actually shit on myself. Yes, I had shit my pants, but this was a different feeling altogether. I could move forward one of two ways. I could be super pissed, or I could laugh about it. I decided to laugh about it and actually muttered aloud, Bethany, I can’t believe you just shit on your foot. 

With my wipes, toilet paper, and hand sanitizer, I cleaned myself up to the best of my ability. At the entrance of the tent, I took off my poop-stained booties and stashed them under a pile of rocks so that they wouldn’t stink up our dwelling or blow away in the middle of the night. Zipped back into the warmth of my sleeping bag, I shook my head and giggled. It’s funny how the universe provides exactly what we need in very strange ways. For the last four days, I’d felt disconnected from my teammates because of my female body. But tonight, my body gave me a poop story. And I’d be sharing that with my teammates over breakfast. At least that was something they’d understand.

Bethany Adams (she/her)

Wilmington, New York—ancestral Mohawk land and traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee peoples

Bethany is a writer, mountain athlete, guide and outdoor instructor. She holds a master’s degree in community development and has been published in Trail Runner and Outside magazines. She is the first woman to achieve 100 fastest known times (FKTs), and in 2020, she and Katie Rhodes became the first women to climb all forty-six High Peaks in the Adirondacks unsupported. She is thrilled to share stories of the healing she has found in nature and the strength of the female athlete.

She can be found on Instagram @bethany.climbs.

a period of transition

Shit. I watched reddish-brown liquid spill from the plastic tube. Shit. It was day fifty-two, just over the halfway point of my run across the country. I had stopped to pee, using the fancy funnel contraption I’d purchased at REI the week before the start of the run. It was a device that helped level the playing field, or in this case, the running field, allowing me the incredibly useful ability to pee standing up. After some trial and error, and a few wet shorts, I had mastered my new tool and by this point, it was second nature.

Mid-September on the outskirts of Oklahoma City, where the rolling plains transitioned into row houses, I stood peeing, and now bleeding. The last few days had been spent running between expansive fields of wheat and corn, each stalk waving as I passed. I was in my unofficial running uniform—a sweat-stained blue T-shirt promoting one of the nonprofits I was supporting and orange Soffe shorts, the really short and thin kind worn by both Hooters girls and Marines. Faded to a light dusty orange from the hours spent beaten by the late-summer sun, they were the only shorts that didn’t leave my sweaty, salt-caked inner thighs rubbed raw. 

I watched as the stream grew darker, wondering if I should tell my support driver. After the first time I discovered blood in my urine, seven weeks ago, I had promised myself that if it happened again, I would take a few days off, see a doctor, and even consider stopping this madness. Only a week into the California desert, I had been questioning whether I could really make it across the country on foot. I had watched bloody urine run down my leg in the shower that night, mixing with the dirt, sweat, and tears, fearing that my body would give out before my already shaky spirit. I had cautiously kept going, threatening to drown myself with more fluids and more electrolytes— super hydration, a friend had called it. That initial bout of blood cleared after a day or two and I had been running strong since.

This whole thing started as part of my transition from active-duty military service. Having spent my entire young adult life serving as an intelligence officer in the Marine Corps, I had a strong sense of identity—after all, that’s what the Marine Corps promises: We Make Marines, the recruiting posters proudly boasted. When people asked what I did for work, I told them I was a Marine. Not that I worked for the Marines or that I was in the Marine Corps—but that I was a Marine. I had started to realize that there was little room for anything else, any other facet or face. But that wasn’t the only thing I was, or the only thing I wanted to be. Leaving the organization meant that would change—that it would have to change. I needed to rediscover, or perhaps even re-create, an identity for myself outside of the uniform. 

While my physical finish line for the run was clear (the Atlantic Ocean, or more specifically, Virginia Beach), the personal and