Erik

Did you read the story in Back Packer a few years ago about two guys who hiked the Lost Coast? Maybe wrong name - along Vancouver island where all the ships used to go down going into Puget Sound. I think they took matches sleeping bags and tarps and found everything else including pots and pans and food? Maybe they took food, but the point is - they did without until they found something useful beach combing.

As one who has spent considerable time hitch hiking around the world, not completely around. I have learned that within 100 yards of any place along a road you will find any number of useful items including wire, bottles, cans, and just a whole bunch of unexpected useful items like nails, dead cats, and steel street sweeper bristles - the locksmiths favorite. Often a digital watch, calculater, pen, ski pole, who knows. Kind of a scavenger hunt camping trip along civilised byways - like my homeless friends.

I guess my style is more to take a few pieces of indestructable gear and expect them them to be there and work when I need them, but then thats just my $.02.

Climbers are always playing with doing something new. Like being the first one to climb everest in a day solo naked while shunning all fixed ropes. I could see someone claiming a prize like - the first one to hike the AT with no gear at all and never took a bath!

How bout a new idea then - the "SIX" things camping list.

Sleeping bag, pack, pan, matches, ground cloth, bisquick.

You can add anything actually found along the road or given to you on the way to the trailhead. I suggest locating a water bottle early on and filling it. You might start the search for food early on. Perhaps some road kill wrapped in a bisquick dough and baked over low coals? Pygmys like to collect tadpoles and slugs and steam them in a bannana leaf!
Jim
P.S> Actually isn't a lot of this about the concept of Do It Yourself camping? Made it or found it somehow perhaps being a connection to deeper Native American ideas?