That old bag, a story from last spring

It's just an old canvas knapsack, a glorified bookbag really. Nothing at all like the nylon and aluminum monstrosity I carry on backpacking trips. The left strap I sewed back on last year when it started to tear away, more out of sentimentality than for practical reasons. I'm sure I could get a better newer one for less than thirty bucks, though nowdays you can spend literally as much as you need to feel sufficiently outdoorsey enough. The last time I checked them out at Bass Pro you could get a gortex model with a built in "hydration unit" and "multifunctional comfort suspension" for just a bit more than you might spend buying a functional 22 rifle.
Anyways the reason I started writing all this was just this morning as I was stuffing it with a lunch and a waterbottle I found a rock. This rock was a fossil really, some sort of shell from when my part of the world was under some ancient sea. I remember originally finding the rock because a large ginseng plant had grown atop it and i had to pry the root and fossil apart last fall.
Now it was finally spring and the old pack was going back to the same woods today. Not for ginseng but for another treasure, ramps. Ramps or wild leeks for you non-hillbilly types are one of the earliest plants to pop up in spring. Fried potatoes and ramps are a delicacy well known only in the hills and hollers of appalachia.
During early spring the old pack is kept out in the shed because you can smell the strong oniony smell of ramps from ten feet away and I risk the boss lady throwing it away if I tried to keep it in the house.
Lunch is a peanut butter sandwich and a tangerine. Those along with a raincoat, camera, waterbottle and a small digging trowel go in the big main compartment. In the small pocket on the back go a compass, knife, and my cell phone and car keys. The cell phone is inside a ziplock bag and turned off. Cell phones have no place in the woods, just like radios in a campground. I sort of have a place in mind for lunch, a small indian mound hidden back in the woods that I think of as somehow being mine.
If fate, or whatever Gods watch over hillbillys like me, smiles on this little adventure maybe I'll also bring home a sack of morel mushrooms. It's a little early but not intirely out of the question. Dipped in milk and rolled in half flour and half cornmeal and fried, they would turn the potatoes and ramps into a feast fit for the gods.
I guess the biggest advantage of having a beat op old knapsack over the latest hi- teck version is you really don't mind if it ends up smelling like fresh ramps and springtime woods.