a kite

From Schmidt & Weston blog

I used to keep a kite in my forestry survival kit. I kept a lot of strange things in that little bag. There is even a rumour that I used to keep a watermelon in my survival bag and nothing else. I didn't do that. A man named Gumby did though.

Mostly I put strange things in my pack because my biggest problem when waiting for forest fires was battling boredom. That is the thing about survival people rarely count on; it can be exceedingly dull.