Ecosystem Notes #26 - Sharpening

Social Leadership Daily - Day #851

River watches as I sharpen the knife. I carry a small, circular stone for this purpose, and he has seen me use this before, but this time there is an intensity to his stare, because it’s his stick that lies on my lap.

I try to maintain the angle at about thirty degrees: too sharp and it digs into the stone, too shallow and I miss the edge.

I am honing it, not really sharpening it. Just taking off the burrs, and giving it an edge. When I’m done, I carefully brush my thumb over the blade. When it’s truly sharp, it scrapes and catches. I am careful not to move laterally, which would result in a cut.

With the stone back in my pocket, I first whip the bark off the stick, with long smooth strokes, before taking the end in one hand, and sharpening the point. To do this, I explain to River that I am not pushing the knife with my left hand - I am left handed - but rather I am applying pressure with the pad of my right thumb on the back of the blade, where it is flat and smooth. This gives me small but powerful cuts, with no risk of the blade slipping. It’s a matter of short cuts, around an inch, then rotating the stick, until we have a point.

At the top, I left the stump of a branch, and demonstrate to River how this is now a ‘thumb stick’, where you can kind of hook your thumb into the ‘v’ between stick and the stub of the branch, and hang you hand there. He gets it, but prefers to hold it like a walking stick.

He’s keen to get going - there is some serious poking to do - but first I explain that we clean the knife first, hone it once more, and put both safely back into their pouch.

These are the small things we share, but my favourite moments.