I sent it to Filson to fix the worn leather a few years ago and they offered to REPLACE it. Why bother?
A couple of pairs of binos. The green Swarovskis are modern 10 X 42's., given to me by Pete Dunne decades ago when he heard I had no good ones.They are the most useful and ergonomic ones I own, and I would never get rid of them.
But they are not romantic. In about 1968 I first encountered German optics in the form of a pair of Ziess Dialyt 7 X 42's like these, carried by Ian Nesbit on a tern colony where my friend Mike Conca and my sometime teacher Jeremy Hatch were studying.I had never seen anything like them-- their legendary, almost supernatural clarity blew me away... and that lifetime guarantee!
It was the first time I ever fell in love with a tool. There was no question of my buying them then-- they already cost about a thousand bucks, when vintage Parkers and L C Smiths went for 500-- but I vowed I would have them someday. And I did, shortly after the green ones.
They are actually beter than the Swaros for dim light conditions, and they no longer make 7 X 42's in the "dated" Dialyt model, but they are my favorites for less rational reasons.
Knives. Here are a pair of blacksmith's knives, one from Magdalena, one from Ulgii. Both are made from truck spring steel. or so I am told. John Besse found the Magdalena one in Kelly ghost town, stuck in a tree, its blade orange, its hilt of juniper white and dry. I cleaned off the rust and sharpened it. The second knife was made for me by the late eagler Manai, from Bayaan Olgii, cousin of Khanat, to go with the snaphaunce. He used one just like it for years.
One more knife, a real Gurkha kukuri, obtained for me by my friend Jean Louis Lassez, traveler, ranch owner, computer geek, satirical artist, Asianist, and fellow Buddho-Catholic, in Nepal.. He had to argue with the shop proprietor to get a real hunter's model, not a gaudy piece of tourist crap. This one is an unpolished carbon steel model with buffalo horn handles.
1 comment:
Steve, regarding your Filson bag never going to France, my daughter, Julia, pilfered my Filson "possibles" bag years ago converting it into a pocketbook. It gets rave reviews in Brooklyn where she now lives, and she had it in France when she lived there for a year teaching English to high school students in Bourges. Gil
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