Showing Off My Standard Load 1984

Here I am in full "regalia" wearing my standard homeless load and posing for the relates in the city. This fotog was taken around 1984 after spending four years living outdoors. It shows the old North Face pack in full light, including a typical white plastic water bottle of the late 1970s, the kind with the red stopper. The pack itself was modified by removing two long side pockets(for balance)as can be seen by the seam sealer running the length down the the side. Behind the pack are two items I carried constantly, the brown tent on the bottom and a blue North Face waterproof anorak wrapped inside a wool poncho blanket gifted to me by a German backpacking student I took out as part of my backpacking guide service in '83.

THE WOOL BLANKET

The purpose of the blanket was twofold, to be placed under my Thermarest for thorn protection inside the tent and to be used as a yoga meditation asana-seat during my twice daily sittings.

NYLON COLLEGE

This blog then becomes an attempt to describe why I now camp out, when I started to camp out, and where I camped. It travels from a USAF barracks in Panama to an apartment in Boone, NC, to several city and county tentsites, to stealth tipi camps, to camps in the surrounding National Forest, to a splendid ridgetop Tipi camp, and finally to camps inside and outside two southern Appalachian wilderness areas.