I imagine there will be a time when cameras exist that can capture the full majestic silliness of ‘The World Hat’ and I, the aging millennial, will go white in the knuckles as the new generation makes a trend of posting those pictures until something happens to the site, accidentally or otherwise, that ruins it.
Just the hypothetical makes me angry.
I’ve been feeling that a lot, lately. The anger at imagined wrongs. I suppose some of it is the helplessness I feel when I read the headlines. I suppose some of it is this unending road trip. The loneliness. It’s been some time since I had a traveling companion or even a nemesis and now, with the camper, I’ve got all this room for either. It’s like driving a haunted house across the country.
And I suppose all of that comes suddenly into focus because I find myself upside-down with my head in a hole and there’s nobody to take my picture from the viewing deck.
‘Given the gaudy extravagance inherent in certain Wayside destinations, ‘The World Hat’ is something of a palate cleanser. It began with a naturally formed stone divot at the top of a rock formation on the edge of private land, owned by a woman named Rhonda Lasser who has never been seen on the property nor quoted speaking about it. Timothy Cortez, whose relationship to Lasser is unknown, is credited with finding the divot and recognizing that it was about the size of a one-size-fits-all hat and, eventually, installing two handlebars on either side of the divot so that he could flip himself upside down and briefly claim to be wearing the planet like a hat. This all happened with relatively little fanfare until a local news article chronicled Cortez’s attempts and failures to be recognized for this feat by a publication like the Guinness World Book of Records (he had broken no record) or Ripley’s Believe it or Not (this was not exactly unbelievable). The story did some rounds on the morning news programs of several neighboring counties and Cortez excitedly showed off pictures of himself wearing the world until the question of landownership came up and then he promptly disappeared from the public eye.
‘The World Hat’ has never quite reached the viral draw that other picture-specific destinations have. Despite Cortez’s bars, standing on one’s head on a stone surface is difficult and uncomfortable and subjects of pictures tend to be red-faced and straining, leading to a secondary nickname: ‘The Space Toilet.’ It doesn’t exactly draw the social media crowd.
At its heart, ‘The World Hat’ is a stupid idea executed with genuine intentions and its construction guarantees that it will be a Wayside destination for some time. Travelers are recommended to bring a friend, both for picture-taking and for spotting. Slipping out of ‘The World Hat’ at just the wrong angle may result in a bone-breaking fall and the nearest hospital is 50 miles down the interstate.’
There is something about wearing ‘The World Hat.’ When I turn upside down, I expect to feel the weight of my body like the weight of the world and to be reminded of all the troubles ahead of us. Instead, I find my worries pushed away as my body strains to stay in position and the horizon stretches out before me like the wide brim of a hat.
-traveler
