Wallets Work!

It's Winter so I have a beard. I shave for events. You should too. 

It's a cold day here in early March, and I have the immersion event on the brain. We're only a month and half out and so that wonderful question of what to take along for this event is the foremost thought in my mind. I may have said this previously, but preparing for an event is almost if not just as fun as going to the event itself. I love the entire process. Getting your gear all laid out, deciding what is important or specific to this particulate excursion. It's such a fun process. 

Recently, I saw a video that has me focused on wallets and their use in the backcountry. In the video, the wallet is presented as a good historical option, but then we're told that it doesn't actually work in the woods. Well, I couldn't let that slide. I've used wallets in the woods for years now, as have many of my backcountry colleagues and we've never had an issue using them. We've talked about the wallet somewhat on this blog when Matthew Fennewald wrote the "Wallet Well Stored" article, but I wanted to go even deeper. 

As a personal preference, I am very much a proponent of the knapsack. It doesn't get much more straightforward and easy than that. Basically a backpack, it's a great for carrying gear, it's evenly balanced across your shoulders and back and it provides a lot of room. You can easily tie a blanket roll to the top and you're ready to go. 

The wallet however is an item that gets a lot of hate from a particular set of the hobby that seems more interested in fantasies and using phrases like "personal preference" and "doing with what they had" as justification for not adopting actual documented methods of transporting gear. A haversack is the favored piece of gear despite the fact that haversacks just don't really show up in civilian and back country contexts enough to justify their widespread use amongst reenactors. Did they exist? Yes. Do we see them described being used by militia and backcountry explorers and hunters? Not really. So why would you choose to use that over a much more highly documented and common item? 

Some things you hear about carrying the wallet is that it slides off the shoulder easily, that it flops around. Well, I am going to prove that carrying a wallet is not only period correct, but also comfortable and practical. First of all, filling the wallet properly is the first step. I usually put food stuffs, consisting of parched corn, salt pork, jerky, bread and usually a bottle of port in one end and personal items such as an extra shirt, knit cap, moccasins, pipe and tobacco, and extra tender. I tie my tin cup to my bedroll, per period descriptions of doing so. I put my bag and horn on and then but the wallet over my left shoulder. Then I put my blanket roll on over the market wallet. The weight of the blanket will hold the back portion of the wallet down and the front portion is weighed down sufficiently by the food stuffs. I never have any issues with the wallet flopping around or shifting off of my shoulder. 

 To wrap things up, I really don't understand the prejudice against using the wallet by a certain set in the hobby, especially to do so in favor of something less commonly seen in the contexts they claim to portray. And often, the haversack, rather than being a linen haversack, are often some strangely designed waterproofed weirdness. As I've demonstrated in the article and the accompanying video, you really can't go wrong, and if you are wearing it correctly, the wallet won't let you down.