Wilderness Tales by Peter Christensen

Author:Peter Christensen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-926936-32-1
Publisher: Heritage House
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

5

A Sharp Knife

Ralph Johnsen is from my home community in Alberta and works as a helicopter engineer. Helicopters require daily maintenance, and an engineer is stationed with the aircraft wherever it is working. His work often took him to remote wilderness areas, and Ralph eventually based himself out of the small mining and tourism community of Atlin, in British Columbia’s northwest corner.

Some called Atlin “Switzerland of the North.” Situated on the east side of Atlin Lake and just east of Canada’s spectacular Coast Mountain Range, this old gold-rush town is home to a handful of winter souls and many tourists, guides and miners during the summer. Most of Ralph’s helicopter work came during the busy summer exploration and outfitting season, so during the winter he sold and repaired snowmobiles and small engines.

He was also a very talented knife-maker; his knives were highly prized for their beauty and function, and I owned one of these knives. A Johnsen knife is well balanced, the handle large and made to fit one’s hand, and the blade has a drop point like fingers. As you use it, you know where the tip is because it feels like an extension of your hand.

During the mid-1980s, I worked in the Bonnet Plume Territory near the Arctic Circle, guiding hunters in a vast and incredibly beautiful northern world rich in wildlife and weather. As the winter season closed in, I headed south on the Alaska Highway toward my home in southeastern British Columbia. It is a 36-hour drive from Whitehorse to Radium Hot Springs. It would take a couple of days, and since an extra day would make little difference to my schedule, I decided to swing down to Atlin and visit Ralph.

I asked around town and was soon directed to his home-based shop. Aside from seeing my old friend, there was also a business reason for visiting. To a guide and northern wilderness traveller, a knife is the most useful of tools—carried with you always and kept sharp. I had purchased a Johnsen knife a year ago, but had a difficult time putting a keen edge on the very hard, high-quality steel. Stainless steel knives can be challenging to sharpen until you have the knack of “finding” the edge.

I was not about to blame the knife for not having a keen edge. But I reckoned that if I visited the knife’s maker I would surely learn the art of sharpening.

Seeking a lesson, I entered Ralph’s dark bear’s den of a repair shop, and there in the dim light I saw his stout, solid figure bent over some work at his bench.

After some preliminary greetings I got the feeling that as much as Ralph would like to visit, he was also in the middle of a project and therefore anxious that I should state my business. The fact that I had not seen him for a couple of years mattered little to Ralph. Like many involved craftsmen, he lived in the present, and the present was demanding his time.

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