I don’t know—seems a little witchy. And they don’t take kindly to witches over there, as I recall. Better go for the dryad look—comfy but not underdone.
Actually, for a while after reading the Narnia series, I never went to bed without having my hiking boots, a small lunch, and a change of underwear with me (funny how heroes in children’s books never change their underwear). I also made sure that this “kit” was close at hand to my mirror and closet.
So when you find that it’s a 1-mile-square pocket dimension with no other exits, you’re going to be destitute. Though you’ll at least have a nice tent to live in.
I’d definitely want to go through. A while back, I wouldn’t, but these days I have little to lose. But I’d still make an effort to see that I could get back safely. For all I know, I’d hike for a mile and discover a highway, and learn that my wardrobe was just a portal to forest in Oregon.
Oh, and I’d see if I could show it to James Randi and win a million bucks. That’d be nice too.
As for what to bring, definitely warm clothes, tent and sleeping bag, a sharp knife and a sword. And a whole lot of light sources. And non-perishable food.
It might be worthwhile to bring an axe and a hunting rifle, but it somehow seems wrong. Hell, might as well bring a breeding pair of cane toads.
True story: the parents of a classmate in grade school bought a new (actually historically old) house on a large hill near the river that ran through my hometown. My classmate, like most kids that age, rummaged through every nook and cranny of this “new” old house and found a secret door in the upstairs bedroom closet floor. It had a ladder going straight down. The parents heard the ruckus and grabbed him before he could explore. Come to find out, this was a secret passageway to a tunnel that went under the river and was used in the days of the Underground Railway to help slaves escape to the North. There was a big write up in the local paper and it seems the previous owner of the house, who had lived there 20 years, had no idea that secret door was even there. The tunnel, however, had been sealed up decades prior to the discovery of the secret door in the upstairs closet.
(I wouldn’t bring a sword because it would be quite difficult to find one. The ones we see in catalogues are generally stainless steel which, I am led to believe, is really crappy material. Story goes that the stuff they put in to make it stainless reduces its strength at the molecular level and causes the sword to break easily.)
Maybe a compound bow and a patent attorney would be a smart move. I’d be the vanguard of the bourgeois (sp?) class.