Outdoor Hack: Edible Cutlery (and the leaky canoe that led to its discovery)

The sign duct-taped on the bottom of the canoe was quite clear: Ikke bruk. Den lekker vann. I had only lived in Norway a couple short weeks by that time, but even my entry-level Norwegian was good enough to inform me that this canoe was NOT to be put in the water due to a leak.

Now, I’m not normally one to break rules or dismiss rational advice, but this was a beautiful October fall day, and the lake was practically calling for us to get out there. So we hunted through our backpacks to see how we might be able to patch the small yet significant gash we identified towards the front end of the canoe. Oliver, being the outdoorsman that he is, produced the most promising option – a thin piece of rubber tubing and a lighter. The idea we came up with was to cut a piece large enough to cover the hole and melt the edges with the lighter to hopefully seal it watertight.

At first, it was going perfectly. We nearly had it tidied up when we got a bit too aggressive with the lighter and accidentally melted through the sheet we had been using to cover the largest segment of the hole. In fact, I think we actually made the hole a bit worse by the time we were done messing around with it.

Despite this setback, we were not prepared to give in, so we went with the next best option we could think of – two strips of duct tape taken directly from the sign telling us not to use the canoe.

We then proceeded to carry the canoe down to the water, drop it in, hop on board and hope for the best.

I have to admit I was feeling rather uneasy about the whole thing, but Balázs and Oliver seemed to be taking it pretty calmly. That is, until Oliver spoke up from the front of the canoe: “Guys, I have some bad news.”

I immediately started thinking about how we were going to swim to the shore without losing our backpacks before we even asked what it was.

“There’s some water coming in through the hole,” Oliver divulged.

Luckily, the amount of water coming in wasn’t fatal to the canoe, and we had spotted a nice looking little peninsula that seemed to be a perfect lunch spot.

We parked the canoe on the shore and proceeded to build a fire for cooking. The main course on the menu: couscous with chili beans and smoked German sausages.

We were quite hungry and very much looking forward to this meal, but we soon realized that there was one thing we forgot to bring with us – something to eat the concoction with, namely forks or spoons. One thing we did have, however, was a bag of large carrots that Balázs brought along. And that gave me an idea, quite a good one I thought. Since we did remember to bring our knives, we should use them to carve the large carrots into spoons, and then eat them at the end.

So that’s what we did, and it worked really nicely! So nicely, in fact, that I think we will do it again next time, and you might just think about trying it on your next day trip as well.

Oh, and by the way, the canoe survived the trip back to our starting point, so all in all, it was another great day in Norway!

Adventure Every Day is a travel & exploration channel started by Oliver Koch and Mike Voellmecke. In addition to the Steemit blog, we post weekly short films of our adventures to our Adventure Every Day YouTube channel. You can also find us on Facebook, and be sure not to miss Oliver's incredible photography on Instagram.