I should be used to this, I keep telling myself, but it doesn’t help.

The toilet is right in front of me, and I’m dying to go, but it’s too cold to pull my pants down.

For the record, it’s an attractive toilet, one of the prettiest I’ve seen. It’s located in the middle of a remote wilderness in the Häme region in interior Finland, on a densely forested isthmus between lakes Pyhä and Näsi. The loo itself is a tiny but charming hut built of wooden planks, painted red, and with a heart-shaped window in the door, the perfect place for private affairs. The latrine compartment is open at the back where the dirty business falls down, so that any foul smell is swept away by winds, disappearing into the Finnish wilds, possibly scaring off lurking polar bears.

I should be used to this, I keep telling myself, but it doesn’t help.

The toilet is right in front of me, and I’m dying to go, but it’s too cold to pull my pants down.

For the record, it’s an attractive toilet, one of the prettiest I’ve seen. It’s located in the middle of a remote wilderness in the Häme region in interior Finland, on a densely forested isthmus between lakes Pyhä and Näsi. The loo itself is a tiny but charming hut built of wooden planks, painted red, and with a heart-shaped window in the door, the perfect place for private affairs. The latrine compartment is open at the back where the dirty business falls down, so that any foul smell is swept away by winds, disappearing into the Finnish wilds, possibly scaring off lurking polar bears.

I’m on holiday, and I’ve borrowed a friend’s cottage as far away from civilisation as possible. However, I can’t quite relax. On this lovely evening, the temperature hovers around zero degrees Celsius but it feels much colder this far away from the comfort of electric lights. The outdoorsy toilet has neither running water nor heating. The candle in my handheld lantern flickers.

I try to fight the cold by telling myself that feeling frozen is nothing but a state of mind and that people hereabouts have been using similar eco-friendly toilets for ages. Even in the heart of winter, when temperatures go down to minus 25°C—and that’s in the daytime.