I actually felt that I addressed the original post along with the side thread, although this was probably unclear. Rick_D said it better...

Quote:
I'm in the camp of it's reasonable to vary one's strategy, depending on the destination and nature of the trip. Do I think relying on cookfires is "cheating?" No, so long as it's a match for the region being traveled. Good technique will leave behind no premanent damage.


So simply said, I feel the responsibility of taking care of the area you are going to use for backpacking supersedes the desire to be as light as possible. If we are solely fixated on being ultralight, it seems to me we may be missing the point of going backpacking in the first place. This is the generic "we" btw. Shelter building, food collecting, fire building and the like are now in my survival technique category. Push comes to shove, it is still all about me.

You can get into the impact of all the things we do to prepare and get to our outdoor destination as well. When I go to the Wind River Range at the end of August I will drive for 2 days to do so. But I think this is loosing sight of things. As our society makes changes, eventually (maybe) I will make the drive in an electric car... Or maybe there will be some sort of mass transit to the area then. Who knows. People will always have an impact on this planet as long as we are here. All we can do is try to minimize this and getting back to the original example, being smart about our use of fire is one small way to do this.