Craig Childs defends the modern forager

I've never been one to try to keep up with the Joneses. I just wait for them to have a yard sale.

As a long-time bum (fishing, ski, van, river, desert, mountain, etc. etc.), I've found there are few things in life that are worth acquiring new. And that there are many, many ways -- many underground economies, and even many sources of free pickings -- to get goods that are plenty good. And cheap.

Which is important when you have built your life around living in the hinterlands of the American West, and around building the time in that life -- generally (at least in my case) at the expense of a more abundant income -- to get out and enjoy it.

Want less; do more. Know what I mean?

Hotchkiss, Colo.-based writer Craig Childs (author of the excellent and engaging House of Rain) knows what I mean. And he waxes philosophic about it -- his own and others' adventures in 21st century scavenging -- in a recent column in the LA Times.

Read Craig Childs' "Man as Scavenger." Then raise a tin-cup toast to hunting and gathering in the modern world!