Yeah, I feel like the Ruana can be made to work a lot better as a general trekking garment, but I definitely need to do more testing with it. It may also benefit from a small hole in the back through which I can pass my quiver strap and/or other straps as necessary, but I don’t think I want to make that modification to this particular garment.
And Iodo - in answer to your question, the style of cloak I’m wearing here is called (by some at least) a “ruana.†I’m not familiar with the etymology, but I’ve also heard it referred to as a “Celtic shawl.†Even so, the design is extremely simple, and has probably been used by countless different cultures over the years. It’s literally just a large rectangle of fabric that has been slit up one side, and sometimes (but not always) has a hole cut out in the center for the neck. It occupies a sort of ambiguous space between cloaks, shawls, and ponchos. In the Lord of the Rings movies, I believe both Aragorn’s first cloak and Gandalf the White’s outer cloak are cut in this same fashion (or very similar), but they also have an attached hood. The nice thing about these is that they’re quite versatile. You can wear them long and flowing, you can throw one or both of the front ends over your shoulder(s) to get them out of your way (which creates a sort of “scarf†effect), you can wrap one or both of the front ends around your head as a sort of hood, and at need, you can use the whole thing as a plain blanket, provided you have something to fasten the front together.
Here’s a pic to illustrate:
- DBEE04BA-6FF6-456B-B47D-044CEBE670B5.jpeg (8.09 KiB) Viewed 26449 times
As for the boots, my companions were both wearing modern winter boots due to the heavy snow, but I wore my usual ranging boots, which at this point are becoming quite worse-for-wear, and really ought to have some pretty extensive repairs/modifications done to them, short of being replaced outright. I did have a pair of lugged Vibram soles added to them some time ago, and they have served me well. It’s a concession to modern design/materials I was more than happy to make, and has saved my butt (literally) on more than one occasion. Otherwise, however, they are made of fairly plain veg-tan leather, and they are definitely not waterproof (particularly because they have a number of lacing holes cut into the actual foot itself, which is how they came from Viking Leathercrafts, before I ever even did any modifications). I’m trying to come up with some solutions to this issue, but for now I have mainly been coping with wet feet by wearing very good modern ski socks - which have done wonders keeping my feet warm even when soaked through, but don’t do a lick of good keeping them dry. Next time I go on a snowy outing I’m seriously considering trying the grocery-bag-under-the-boot hack I heard someone mention a while back (might have been on Facebook, I can’t quite recall).
really though, we all could have used some other form of traction. There were a number of ordinary folks on the trail that day too, and most of them had snowshoes. We were certainly envious on numerous occasions when we accidentally stepped a few inches away from the center of the trail and sank into the snow up to about our knees.
to me it shows the rare and fleeting glimpse of a ranger through the snow, that common folk would be lucky to see
), the only difference being that it's shorter at the front, has a button fastening on the slit and can't be worn with a pin