[jacobgold]

The Wright brothers' original vision for airplanes was that they could pretty much take off and land from a basic field. And they did seem to consider the idea of heavily prepared airfields something of a failure case.

There are very good reasons things didn't go that way. But, as is often the case, the original vision had a very pure and strong idea in it that has been somewhat lost. It's still alive in helicopters, and some other air vehicles, but it'd be cool if future aircraft were more robust in this way.

[sbierwagen]

The Wright Flyer massed 274 kg. Of course it could take off from an unprepared field-- with a modern engine, it could be doing nine foot takeoffs like in STOL competitions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMVjYT6laKo

The modern equivalent to a Wright plane would be something like a paramotor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvQ9DjJNal0

[WalterBright]

The 737 was originally designed for unpaved short runways. There was even a rock shield attachment for the nose gear.

[m4rtink]

Gliders are made to land in random fields without major obstacles (like cows, fences or hay bales) and regularly do that when they can't manage to glide to an airport.

You need to disassemble the plane afterwards (a routine operation, gliders are built that way) or possibly even have a powered airplane land nearby and aero-tow you back up if the field is good enough for that. :-)