Remember Tom and Huck, those two free-spirited scallywags last seen rafting down the Mississippi River?? Well, they showed up again, a century later, canoeing on the Connecticut River, going under different names and disguised as over-the-hill voyageurs. Preferring not to spend their evenings on the river under the stars, the two were considerably older and maybe a little wiser than the Hannibal, Missouri boys, in fact, "too old to be sleeping on the ground, cooking over an open campfire and crapping in the woods." But their sense of adventure hadn't diminished over time.

Two Coots in a Canoe: An Unusual Story of Friendship chronicles the drift and paddle of retirees H. Ramsey Peard and author David E. "Bugsy" Morine down the 600-mile length of the Connecticut, from the river's origin near Colebrook, New Hampshire, to its terminus in Long Island Sound. The craft of choice and borrow was a Mad River canoe, more than just theoretically subject to shrinkage by some measure "every day you spend [in it]?with somebody." ?

The trip, accomplished mostly affably, was Ramsey's idea. Bugsy agreed to the journey, but only sans camping, because God didn't put him on Earth to have a lousy time. Instead, after paddling only from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. ("so as not to miss the cocktail hour," according to Ramsey), they elected to spend evenings, like Streetcar's Blanche DuBois, "relying on the kindness of strangers." Actually, some of the strangers were people with whom Bugsy had some association during his 30 years with The Nature Conservancy. Others had responded to published or clarion calls to provide the two coots with respite, room, board and adult beverages at strategic, none-too-soon put-outs along the river. Ramsey developed the itinerary based on the call responses and a uniquely conjectured hospitality rating system. The sexagenarian Tom and Huck referred to themselves variously and not incorrectly as geezers, moochers, gray-haired paddlers, old guys and Old Kindness guys.

The adventurers became acquainted an eon earlier while serving time together at the University of Virginia's Graduate School of Business Administration. Ramsey had gone on to become quite successful in real estate in Cincinnati, whereas Bugsy opted for a career in conservation in New England, a field of endeavor typically peopled provincially by white, well-educated, earnest, inconspicuously affluent, casserole-bearing socializers. The Tom and Huck friendship since UVA survived despite their disparate professions and perhaps because of opposite (complementary?) personalities?more Felix and Oscar than Alphonse and Gaston.

Ramsey has the first word in the book, providing a light and insightful Foreword. He warns that author Bugsy just might portray his helmsman in a less than flattering light because that's the sort of thing that someone nicknamed after Prohibition Era gangster Bugsy Moran might do. Bugsy doesn't disappoint. He variously characterizes Ramsey as quiet, somewhat aloof, cerebral and cartographically impaired, all the while sporting Roy Orbison prescription sunglass, a wide-brimmed and floppy bonnie hat and little-girlie life vest worn under his sweatshirt so he looked a geriatric version of The Hulk. The generally good-natured banter between the paddlers affirmed a most unusual friendship.

Just what motivated the trip for Ramsey remained in doubt if not a mystery until near the book's end. What it was for Bugsy was woven clearly into the narrative. It's that conservation thing. The Mad River debarked with small amounts of grant money in Bugsy's back pocket to assist local organizations struggling piecemeal to protect the flow and beauty of the Connecticut River and its tributaries (sort of reciprocating the kindness of some strangers). Conservation, however, isn't the pretext for the trip or even necessarily Bugsy's main objective. But it is what he has done for years, apparently very well, and it is in his character and his writing. Defilement of the river, the blight of certain towns and the agents of both along the way are not spared his pointed (usually humorous) derision, whereas the scenic and natural aspects of the waterway and its riparian areas, however artificially preserved, are praised.

For both coots, regardless of what prompted each to settle into the Mad River in the first place, the paddle became a voyage of discoveries. Something Ramsey learned (but apparently failed to grasp despite his Princeton undergraduate education) is that river current doesn't necessarily flow the shortest distance between two points. He learned that beer is good bait for chatting up fellow boaters, particularly those of the female persuasion. He found out that it's OK to invite people to visit him in Cincinnati, because they won't show because, after all, it's Cincinnati. He learned that conservationists tend to be boring, nonsmoking, "martha'd out" ideologues. He learned that watching carp procreate is more interesting to others than listening to his golfing stories. Other life-changing discoveries for Ramsey involved Port-a-Johns and Gatorade.

For his part, Bugsy found out that business CEO Ramsey cut his own hair and had a flossing fetish. He learned, too, of the sad demise of girlie calendars, and that Windsor, Vermont, is "kind of a dump" and spiritless. He became aware that Funny Cide lost the Belmont Stakes because of bad shoes. He found a miniature Boo Radley skulking about a place called Saxton's River. He shared a hamburger and an Ol' Yeller moment with an ancient Labrador retriever, and found out that milk is measured by weight not volume. He saw firsthand that the Holyoke Dam?"dirty and disgusting, like a ball of hair clogging up a drain"?is the worst of 17 damn dams on the Connecticut River. Also, any recipe for the rare striped bass caught below Holyoke Dam probably likely won't offset the aftertaste and after effects of the mercury in it. It became evident to Bugsy that Homeland Security's Code Orange at power plants along the river means that the front gate probably ought to be closed. Milfoil is the AIDS of lakes, he discovered. And bullet holes in a posted map of Bedell Bridge State Park was local pop art, carrying the tacit message, "We have to keep working to protect nature from the morons who are too stupid to respect it."

Together, the friends found the serendipity of a bridge-lynched, full bottle of Meyer's rum. They learned that "Dead rivers are the price we pay for cheap power and paper," and big, dense, concrete balls are Dartmouth College's idea of "orbs of knowledge." They came dangerously close to attending an event that featured Abenaki songs, bagpipes, a string band and an Irish dancing troupe, presumably not in concert but who really knows what passes for entertainment in New England. They had brushes with the specters of J.D. Salinger, Spaceman Bill Lee and Katharine Hepburn. ?They were able to declare the faux testosterone roar of a cigarette boat to be the winner of the "Most Obnoxious Sound of the Trip."

This was a fun book to read. I especially liked Bugsy's occasional irreverences. The narrative has some of the best stylistic elements of Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, John Steinbeck's Travels with Charlie and William Least Heat Moon's River Horse. For some reason, the conservation theme may prove too pervasive, high-minded or too much of a stick in the eye for some readers, but it serves as an important vehicle for the author to impart worthwhile, nasally indignant messages that probably wouldn't find space with other print medium. One example I liked was:? "One of the great fears of Homeland Security is that terrorists will contaminate our water supply. If clean, potable water is so important to our homeland security, why aren't we aggressively cleaning up our rivers?? All Congress has to do is to enact a law that would make it illegal to dump any untreated waste?human, industrial or agricultural?into a river?. Congress won't do that because cleaning up rivers isn't a national priority. As a society we're too complacent, too shortsighted, too greedy, too arrogant and too stupid to see what we are doing to ourselves."?? I didn't know whether to append that with an "Amen" or "Burma Shave."

This book ends at the beginning, that is, with the Dedication, which reads poignantly, "To Ramsay, you damn fool, our trip wasn't over yet."

David Morine has written other books and I will be getting a copy of at least one more. Two Coots in a Canoe was published in 2009 by Global Pequot Press; it retails for $22.95.