I never had the patience for upscale backpacking food. In my younger days I ate an embarrassing amount of Dinty Moore stew, mainly because it could be heated right in the can. No need to dirty a pan and waste precious water cleaning it.
Add some smashed bread, bruised fruit, and a warm can of beer: dinner was served. I also routinely took a half-pound bag of bag of Peanut M&M’s; protein and chocolate in a convenient, tidy pellet.
Once I spent a few hours in the sun on a small cliff in Missouri’s Mark Twain National Forest, legs kicked over the edge, reading Thomas Pynchon. Occasionally I would tip some M&M’s from the bag into my mouth and wash them down with a swill of water.
At some point I may have noticed a bitter taste. Maybe I chalked it up to the novel.
When I stood up to leave, I realized that a steady stream of ants had invaded the candy bag and I had been eating them for some time.
And what a pointless death. They couldn’t possibly have breached the hard coating. Or could they?
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