My SCA hat

Part of my official SCA issued wardrobe is a baseball cap with the logo prominently placed in front. In color it’s an olive- khaki, with a nicely curved brim and a metal adjuster on the back. A run of the mill baseball hat, really.

From the moment I opened that priority mail box I’ve been absolutely in love with it.

Now, I love hats in general, but baseball caps have never been my thing (I’m much more a hand-knit winter hat or floppy brimmed gardening hat person), so I’ve done a lot of pondering on the phenomenon of this hat’s appeal. This is not a logical attraction, at least not at its surface.

The hat does not make me beautiful- no complementing my eyes or any of that nonsense (not that it’s unattractive… just, well, I’m not a baseball cap kind of girl, as previously mentioned, and I’m not the sort of person whose sex appeal is heightened by the casual sportiness of such a hat). It isn’t from anywhere special to me, or made for me by someone I care about. It won’t even protect me from sunburn or mosquitoes as well as some of the other hats I own. In fact it isn’t at all the sort of thing I would have picked out as a garment that would be precious to me... and yet it is.

Maybe part of the appeal is that this is the first time I’ve had an official hat of any sort. There’s nothing silly about this cap (however it may look in this picture)- it’s not frivolous or embarrassingly utilitarian, feminine or manly, coquettish or standoffish. There’s something almost… professionally asexual about it. This is the hat of someone who works outdoors, who is here to be friendly but never flirty, to do a job well and spend her spare time enjoying the natural world in a quiet unassuming manner. It makes me feel a bit like a park ranger, in the best possible kind of way.

I always smile at my reflection when I see myself in this hat, with the simple pleasure of it. In this hat I feel like a legitimate environmental educator, not a camp counselor or a wannabe teacher or what have you, but the sort of person who is perfectly comfortable with a predatory bird perched on her arm. It makes me feel like the sort of person who appears in brochure pictures with a toad in her hands, foot planted comfortably on a moss covered stump, children’s eyes agog around her. It makes me feel a little more like all the naturalists I’ve ever admired.

It’s amazing how powerful a hat can be.