I found this picture from 2018 on a thumbdrive of my old hiking pole. One morning, I got out of my tent after a windy night camping and a big branch had fallen right next to me. I chopped a section off and made it into a trekking pole, and put an Altoids tin on the side with a string stretched down the length of the pole. The top of the stick was forked so that one side could hold a glass slide, and the other side could hold a thumb pick. I would set the instrument across my lap with the tin facing upward and stroke downward with the thumbpick while sliding with the glass bottleneck. It was an out of the blue idea that worked pretty well. I had not played a dulcimer at all at this time, but now that I have I can really appreciate the similarities between sliding a diddley bow and noting a dulcimer. I eventually gifted this pole to a very eccentric old homeless man who locals called 'The Mad Hatter' who played it for about a month before a police officer in that town intentionally snapped it because the man was annoying the officer. It only took about 10 minutes to find a new branch, and move all the hardware over to it, but it was still a pretty mean thing to do. Anyway I thought this walking stick was pretty cool and I think it helped me develop some skills that translated to dulcimer  when I started playing it a year or so later :)