Have you ever noticed how canoe tripping can bring out those subtle little incompatibilities between people? If you haven’t, just try stayin’ out another week.

Take my baby brother, Paul, and me. We were raised together. Same backyard brawls. Same gettin’ our ears slapped back for fightin’ with each other. In short, the same loving nurture. Heck, we were even raised to paddle together! But when I took Paul on a two-week canoe trip in Canada, I discovered that Nature had taken us down divergent paths on a fundamental issue or two.

I had done all the logistics for this trip. I planned the route. Got the permits. Packed the commissary. Bought the groceries. Paul was just comin’ along for the ride. I thought this was pretty big of me. What Paul thought, he kept to himself until we were on the trip.

Now, being brothers, we’ve always had our little differences. It comes with the territory. But I never expected to meet with resistance when it came to the menu. After all, we both like to eat. I had just never before realized how much we like to eat different things.

I myself am no gourmet cook, especially when it comes to camp cooking. Bakin’ bannock or brownies in a makeshift Dutch oven on the campfire coals is about as esoteric as I get. I like my camp meals hot, hearty, and fast off the fire—and the fewer dishes to wash afterwards, the better. My cookin’ may not be elegant, but it is sustaining, and I figured it oughta meet just about anyone’s basic requirements. Besides, who needs candlelight and mood music when you’re watchin’ the sun set beyond the Canadian Shield?

And I guess it was a good thing that I’m NOT a gourmet cook, ‘cause if I had been, Paul probably woulda starved to death this trip, bein’ even more of a food fundamentalist than I am. Turns out my baby brother is a real white bread and bologna kind of guy. He’s the kind who likes to put ketchup on everything, one of the few exceptions he’ll make to his general rule that different kinds of foods should never touch each other. He’s the sort who suspects that granola is actually a leftist plot to ruin the world. And he about laughed himself sick when he discovered whole wheat spaghetti in the food pack. The concept of whole wheat anything—even bread—was gastronomically beyond him. Well, it takes all kinds. And I coulda been accomodating . . . if he woulda mentioned something about his food fetishes before we left home. A couple of days out into a two-week trip through the middle-of-nowhere-in-particular Ontario is a pretty poor time to be commentin’ on how you don’t care for the selection of groceries in the food bag. It’s not like I can pop off to Rainbow at two am to exchange something!

What I really don’t get is that Paul suspected from the very start that this would be a problem and didn’t say anything. He just stoically accepted the fact that I’d be starvin’ him in the wilderness for two weeks. Of course, fraternal stoicism isn’t quite the pure thing that Epictetus had envisioned. It soon degenerated into quite a lot of what I’d call grousing and Paul deluded himself into thinking was good-natured, constructive criticism. It’s all a matter of perspective.
Paul had his own, unique way of dealing with adversity. And he really had been plannin’ ahead, it just didn’t show right away. He had already charted his course through this wilderness ordeal by hunger and taken steps to assure his survival. But he didn’t reveal his secret until the third morning in camp. That’s when the box of Twinkies appeared nailed to a tree just outside of Paul’s tent.

Now, I’ll give Paul credit for not drivin’ the nail himself. He just made good use of what was left behind for him. But he is a practitioner of good, old-fashioned, time-dishonored woodcraft. He never outgrew Boy Scout camp. We don’t see quite eye to eye on this one, either. But it keeps him amused. And he does clean up after himself, dismantling his handiwork when we leave.

When we made camp early on this gorgeous day after two days of rain, I wandered back down to the lake to terrorize the local fish. Paul stayed behind in camp to inflict his own vision of civilization on our little piece of wilderness. We had gathered a sizable woodpile here. But where I had seen only the potential for a relaxed and prolonged campfire and maybe a Dutch oven dessert, Paul had seen living room furniture in the rough. He happily sawed and stacked and lashed until he had himself an easy chair and coffee table by the fire ring. He probably wouldn’ta stopped at that except that he’d used up all the line. And he knew me well enough to not try takin’ down the tarp or takin’ the painters off the canoe. I really didn’t view any of these improvements as improvements (not that I was above edgin’ Paul outta his seat any time he stood up). But Paul was pleased. All he needed was a remote control for the fire and he woulda felt right at home.

I didn’t see the Twinkies until the next mornin’ or I mighta insisted they be hung right along with the real food. The first I got wind of it was when I woke to hear Paul chuckling softly to himself. I looked out to see Paul lyin’ propped up on his elbows, halfway outta his tent gazing up in amusement at what looked like an illicit bird feeder on the tree. It was his hoarded box of Twinkies. The cardboard had gotten damp in all the rain of the past few days and Paul had hung it up to air. The Twinkles, of course, were still unscathed in their individually wrapped, fresh forever, plastic packaging. Anybody who’s ever tried to force their way into a bag of snacks without a weapon knows how hard it is to frustrate the fiercely protective machinations of modern, mass-market food distribution.

And sure enough, there was one of the resident red squirrels perched on the soggy box, set to explore the exotic delicacies of this newly-opened neighborhood breakfast bar. It looked a bit confused and tentative at first, not quite sure of what to make of the proffered provender. But animal instinct is not something to be easily put off by a piece of crackly plastic wrap. The squirrel had accurately divined that there was something like food inside that plastic so the plastic was soon shredded and out of the way.

Peeling back the wrapper, the squirrel got its first taste of gooey, cream, Twinkie filling. Then it sat up on its haunches in an attitude of startled and reverent attention, paws out to the side in awed surprise. An ardent light of discovery came into its eyes. The pathway to junk food Nirvana lay before it. It stood there a moment in stunned and statuesque silence. Then it clutched the Twinkie to its furry little bosom and ran off with its prize to the woods where it could feast freely and privately.

Paul just laughed as the little bandit made off with part of his trove of comfort food. I was surprised he didn’t chase that squirrel into the woods, wrestle it to the ground, and take back his own. People do tend to get territorial and possessive when on short rations. Maybe three days of wilderness magic were finally working to soothe his city-jangled nerves and ease his technology-dependent appetites. And, who knows? maybe he was just feelin’ generous. Of course, it might have been better for the squirrel if he had wrestled that Twinkle away from it. I have no idea how much of a Twinkie one red squirrel can eat before it explodes or something. And then, if it did die of its gluttony, there may have been enough preservatives present to pickle the luckless rodent in situ, like a taxidermist’s mount. Eerie. Or maybe it took its prize back to share with its friends and relations in a big, backwoods party. In that case, it was a good thing we were movin’ on. Can you imagine havin’ to share a campsite with a clan of sugar-buzzed red squirrels? As if red squirrels weren’t buzzed enough already! And the next day they woulda all been hung over and cranky and needin’ another fix. It coulda gotten ugly.

But we were movin’ on anyway. And it turned out to be a fine trip. Paul’s junk food stash rode in the food pack thereafter. Paul complained about nearly everything I fixed to eat but ate it heartily anyway. I complained about his woodcrafted furniture but sat in it every time I got the chance anyway. Ah, compromise! It keeps the peace and helps smooth over some of those subtle, little incompatibilities between people.

Well, ‘til next time, keep your paddle wet. And keep in touch. Drop me a line c/o Rich Furman and Morgan MacBain, 901 East Geranium Ave., St. Paul MN 55l06 or editor@canoe-kayak.org. Let me know what sort of squabbley little fallings-out you’ve experienced by canoe. Remember, Uncle Wally promises to 1) tell the truth so nobody would ever believe it anyway and 2) never reveal your true identity to anyone, not even your psychologist.