Bear Chum. It's Better than Ex Lax.

You know what happens when you go on a canoe trip with friends and one of them is a photographer? No? Let me tell you. First, you let him prepare dinner, which he has affectionately (and appropriately) named "Bear Chum." It's basically hunks of chicken and pork sausage in some kind of spicy, garlic pepper sauce. After dinner, you sit by the fire and drink lots of Drambuie. When the Drambuie is gone, you drink lots of Yukon Jack -- and before you know it, it's 1 am and you have laughed your ass off for about 5 solid hours.

After the fire and the conversation die down, you stumble to your sleeping bag and close your eyes and your tent spins at exactly 45 rpm, which is fortuitous because you've got Van Morrison's Brown-eyed Girl stuck in your head, and somehow that always sounds more authentic with all the scratches and pops included. You don't actually remember falling asleep, but you close your eyes for a second to see how it tastes and the next thing you know, you're waking up because your buddy the photographer is clomping around outside your tent in the dark. Why? He's getting ready to take pictures of the friggin' sunrise, of course.

You sit up and the first thing you realize is that you still have your boots on. Then you realize that you are pretty sure you're still a little drunk and that you'd give your left nut to have slept through the headache that is now trying to escape from your skull via the back of your eyes. Your stomach revolts at the thought of breakfast, so you lie back down. 30 minutes later, you realize you have to piss like a racehorse and decide that the best course of action would probably be to get up and do so because you only brought one change of clothes.

You stumble out of your tent with your wife's point and shoot camera (just in case) and take pictures like this one over your shoulder while you look for a convenient tree:

Somehow, it almost (but not quite) seems worth it.

Here's one from someone who actually knows what they're doing.