Since we are both pretty darn interested in the world of food and wine, we try to bring a little bit of luxury along on our hikes, especially a treat or two for the palate. A dark chocolate bar seems to hold up just fine, as long as we keep it pretty well insulated in our bear canister.

And we've been known to take wine as well, now that we have a few lightweight plastic bottles that we have saved from the garbage heap or an airline. Chilled in a mountain stream, wine is a wonderful way to celebrate dinner.

(These bottles work great, by the way, as long as the wine is young and fresh--not recommended for aged Bordeaux.)

Of course, that's still a lot of weight on a longer trip, so for those we've taken to filling a few of the miniature bottles with Scotch, Anisette, or even Absenthe for our hikes. It only takes a small amount of the good stuff to give us a nice lift after dinner. And whenever we do, we remember the lines from the great poet Omar Khayyam, in the Rubaiyat:

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse---and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness---
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

Exactly.
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