Topical Guide 51
Mark Dorset
Adventures, Provisions for
“I DON’T CARE what kind of food you bring so long as you bring plenty of it,” Raskol said when I asked him for suggestions for the menu.
Little Follies, “Life on the Bolotomy”
Our boat, which had cost us a week’s labor in the spring, was in form like a fisherman’s dory, fifteen feet long by three and a half in breadth at the widest part, painted green below, with a border of blue, with reference to the two elements in which it was to spend its existence. It had been loaded the evening before at our door, half a mile from the river, with potatoes and melons from a patch which we had cultivated, . . .
Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Modesty should prevent me from quoting myself, but it won’t:
When I was twenty-four or twenty-five, I spent a weekend on the Concord and Merrimack rivers. Inspired by A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, . . . my friend Peter Leroy and I spent a weekend paddling a canoe from Concord, Massachusetts to Newburyport, Massachusetts.
I remember the pleasure of preparing for the trip, poring over maps, finding a canoe that someone was willing to let us use, and, especially, buying our provisions at an enormous store that catered to campers, hikers, climbers, and other outdoor adventurers. I had a great time choosing freeze-dried food there. When I was done, I had every meal and snack planned to the last bite.
“What’s all this?” Peter asked when he saw the stuff.
“These are our meals,” I said, “freeze-dried and sealed in plastic. In these packets we’ve got all of a meal’s nutrition and flavor, but none of the weight of the water. All we have to do at meal time is add water, heat, and eat—and—” I added, producing the collapsible bucket I’d bought—“we’ll scoop the water from the river with this nifty gadget.”
“Impressive,” he said. “There wasn’t anything like this this back when I took my trip to the source of the Bolotomy River. I’ve probably told you about—”
“Many times,” I said.
“I told you about the food I packed?”
“Yes. Yes. Yes.”
“Oh. Well. . . .”Mark Dorset, “Honesty: A Chapter for a Topical Autobiography,” The Babbington Review, Issue Number 7
[more to come on Friday, July 23, 2021]
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