I came across a post Loren Coleman wrote in 2013 which discussed cvryptozoologists in general and the need for one critical accessory: a cool hat. Ken Gerhard is almost unrecognizable without his leather cowboy hat, and the late Scott Norman and I used to kid about his fedora vs. my black low-crown Stetson. Loren likes fedoras, too. Lyle Blackburn and his cowboy hat are still looking for sasquatch (who does not appear to wear a hat), and Australia's Tim "The Yowie Man" of course goes with the Aussie outback hat. That crops up almost as often as fedoras do. See Loren's post for pictures.
I am proud to say I seem to have found a unique hat niche. When my day-to-day Stetson gets really beat up after a couple of years, I move it into the outfit I use to play wizard Harry Dresden at comic conventions.
My standard hat, worn in this case while hawking my creature novel The Dolmen.
Old hat, from about 2006.
A hat for a wizard
One of my hats is in Loren's International Cryptozoology Museum. I wore that one while filming MonsterQuest. If you're curious, it's a low-cost brand: I've moved on to real Stetsons, which are kind of a family thing. My grandfather on my mom's side was a friend of the head of the Stetson hat business. In World War II, very few Stetson hats could be made because all the felt was needed for uniforms, but once a year, a deliveryman would drop off one hat at Mom's old house in Maine.
As he noted, I'm not the field researcher, more an academic type, but I like to at least look like I'm going somewhere adventurous. (Both photos of me in Loren's post were taken in zoos.) Also, I live in Colorado Springs, and UV rays and bald heads at 6,000 feet don't get along.
Since I'm rambling about hats, I still tip mine. Archaic? I don't know. When my mom was a girl she met Robert Frost, who removed his hat and bowed. If it was good enough for Robert Frost, it's good enough for me.
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