tinfoil hat timmy
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It's always good to see something like this healup without long term issues.
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Alayna's Hand Four Weeks Later
- Thread starter Mistwalker
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prom52
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Best news of the day Brian. Injuries of this nature & the scars they leave behind always tell stories many years after. This one will tell the story of a fathers love for his baby girl. My guess is that a year from now that scar will be faint, however, the memories will remain strong.
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Glad to see it all healed up. Keep rubbing vitamin e into that scar until you can't stand the pain. Treating it now is critical.
Comprehensivist
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Thanks for the update Brian. That is great news. I am happy for Alayna. Andy's advice to treat the scar with the vitamin E is a good one. Take good care now to finish the healing process.
On a separate note, Alayna's knife and sheath looks really good. Just like dad's set-up.
Phil
On a separate note, Alayna's knife and sheath looks really good. Just like dad's set-up.
Phil
Mistwalker
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The body, albeit fragile in some ways, really is amazing in how it can heal. But I also do not discount the healing energy of prayers and thoughts of concern of our friends. If there has been one lesson in all of my teachings over the years it has been just how amazing the human mind and heart (not the one that pumps blood) are. and how powerful positive energy is. As I read through this thread I am once again reminded just how fortunate she is and we are, for we have a wealth of friendship that could never be measured with numbers nor purchased with any form of currency. That is an incredibly humbling yet fantastically awesome feeling.
Thank you!! I will show her this thread when she comes in today and it will make her smile very big, and seeing my daughters' smiles are my favorite highs in life. Alayna is a special young lady, and I can't even begin to describe all the ways I am fortunate to have her in my life.
Glad to see Alayna's healing nicely. Thanks for the update Brian. :thumbup:
Thank you Gus, we are all glad to see it too.
Thank you Abe! I will pass that along
Indeed Chris, there has been a lot of good news these past two days!
Thank you Brandon. Same here man, I have been seen and been through quite a bit in my youth. I have been beaten, shot at, stabbed, sliced, and chased for miles through strange cities. I had never in my life felt as much fear and adrenaline as I felt the moment I saw her walking down our drive way crying and covered in blood. I think only our children have the capacity to show us the true depth of our emotions. Though reading through this our friends are pretty good at it too.
Me too man, I have been getting her ready to help me in some very special projects in my professional career this year also. Given the subject matter of the manuals she will be helping with, this accident will actually give her a context by which to better understand some of it.
Thank you Todd! We are very happy about that here as well!
Thanks Dan. Yes we had been very concerned, even though there were bad signs initially, just how it would do over time. Luckily it's depth was more lateral like a fillet than straight in to the mechanical parts of the hand.
Thank you Dave! I knew a lot of folks had been worried about her, so I wanted to let everyone know she is doing very well, even better than we had dared to hope looking at it when it was fresh.
Us too man, I don't have to words to say how glad I am it is going so well.
Thank you Peter. Yes luckily I was able to remain calm in the face of some ineptitude that night, so her main memories can be of us being there for her and with her through it all. I knew going in that her autism, though it's not on a level that makes her require special classes, makes it hard for her to grasp abstract concepts. She would have been afraid the anger was over her getting hurt and she would not have understood that it was about how she was being treated. Not to mention me losing it would not have helped how they treated her. I've been in some dangerous situations where I have had to remain calm in order to deal with things and live through them before, but that night was an exercise in self control unequaled in my life to date.
Thanks Andy, and we are man. Her hands were just really dry and dirty after being out with me for a while after school. Lisa and I both attack it with vitamin E, her with a lotion she uses, and me with an oil that I use. I think with most of it being directly on her life-line most of it will disappear in time, but I hope it never completely goes away, so she doesn't just lose that lesson and those memories completely over time as more things get crammed into her head.
Mistwalker
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Thank you Phil! Speaking of Alayna's knife and sheath...there is actually a story (maybe a long story) behind that :
I know this part is not going to be Fiddleback Forge related per se...yet it is Fiddleback related in history and in the sense that I am training her in knife skills so that one day she will have and be able to use her own Fiddleback effectively and safely in the field. In looking I have at this point decided that I want to get her a Patch Knife later as I think that would suit her well, but I will see what models may be available as we get closer to that point.
I may also seem to ramble a little here. I hope not too much and I hope you can bear with me....
In training her in knife skills, and watching her hand movements (and being pretty anal about safety) I decided I was more comfortable with her learning with a knife with a guard. I figure guardless knives are called adult knives for a reason. So knowing it was just a temporary phase I had loaned her a knife I had bought for some pretty rough use in some projects I am working on. It was one made by a man named Ed Martin who is another good friend of mine that I met back in 2009. Ed is really a simple country boy at heart. Even though, like me, he has spent a lot of his life on the Gulf of Mexico and really appreciates the same properties of CPM S35VN that I do, to this day he still carries an older hunting knife he made out of 1095 years ago. However as fate would have it some of his earlier customers were military guys, and over the years he market has developed such as to be primary active military personnel. Most of whom are guys in obscure specialized units in different militaries scattered around the globe. The guys that turned me on to his work are friends in the US Army who worked in reconnaissance units and in the EOD.
In all honesty, in my studies, and in my work, I can be pretty hard on my tools. I do some pretty crazy stuff with my knives sometimes, and I tend to take them well beyond what most would consider reasonable expectations of use. My personal experience has been that in the cases of makers, like Andy, Dylan, and Ed, who honestly strive to make a great and highly functional tools, that the tools usually handle more than the makers are willing to warranty them against...including some of the stupidity they are rightfully unwilling to warranty them against. One reason I tend to have a Fiddleback on me at all times....lately it has been a Handyman model I edc. They have the aesthetics and artistic creativity that I like to see in a knife, yet having abused several over the years I know that when it comes down to it they are also extremely durable. They are just nicer than I want to set out to intentionally abuse in crazy experiments. For those knives I like heavy, over-built tools with metal guards to protect the forward end of the handle material. With Ed's market being primary combat personnel this is an area he has had a lot of experience in and a lot of real time feed back from the field on, from guys in special operations forces in the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Germany, and more. I have actually interviewed several of these guys personally and have become friends with several over the years.
Well...since he is retiring this year, I wanted to get a couple of very specialized tools for some special projects I am working on before he is done. So I called him one night and we talked a long time about what I need and why, and life in general. He knows I do wilderness skills workshops with families here on the mountain, and he sort of half-jokingly asked if I do any old man courses, that he is getting too old to keep up with the young kids these days. I told him that I will be 51 this year and that I can't either, and that if he wanted to come up that my partners and I would create a specialized course just for him, much like we do with our other clients.
Then I said speaking of training, I am ramping up Alayna's training this year so she can help me with my work this summer and on into the future. That I was letting her use the Runt I had bought from him, but that it bothered me. The size and style are fine and she handles it very naturally, but it seems out of place in her hands. She likes colors, lots of colors, and that I did not like the idea of pushing my fondness of subdued earth tones on her. That if it were possible I would like to order another Runt for her later on. Same shape, same type guard, but lighter in weight to be easier for her to handle for long periods, and brighter in color to better suit her own personality. He said that should be doable, and asked what colors she likes, and then said that we could work on that one later on in the year.
Then in a few weeks he had completed the hard use survival knife I had ordered and emailed me that it had been shipped. When the box arrived it had not one but two bundles wrapped in paper. Opening the smaller of the two had a similar effect as reading this thread. It brought tears to me eyes to see the tangible aspect of just how many friends that Alayna has out there that care about her, as what I was holding was a Runt with a slightly thinner blade, a red handle, with yellow liners, and hollow pins filled with bright blue epoxy, with a very nicely tapered tang and an aluminum guard rather thatn a stainless steel one, so the weight had actually been reduced by a significant amount, and the colors could not have been more perfect for her brightly eclectic personality. All I could do was look at it and smile as a couple of tears rolled down my cheek. It took me a few minutes to even remember there was also a knife in that box for me. Man did Alayna;s eyes light up when she saw the knife after I had put all of the kit together with it.
So, having had the accident that was traumatic enough to teach very valuable lessons in not only how fragile the human body can be, but also how things can look and actually be very bad, but still be ok later. And having been fortunate enough as to be so well equipped by such wonderfully good friends like Phil, Blaine, and Ed, and supported by so many fantastic friends here, this year Alayna is on her way to learning a great many new lessons in life that I have been impatiently waiting the last decade to be able to teach her. And I feel blessed beyond my vocabulary's ability to describe it.
These are the two knives that were in the box.
Alayna's new kit
Thus, with the Handyman in my pocket for any finer work. It's so light I hardly notice it till I need it
These on our belts, and snake protection on our lower extremities, we will set out this year for her to explore parts of her world that she has only seen in pictures
And much like when I take her out to explore the urban world and try new foods, she has very little idea what lies in store
Though she doesn't remember much of it now, she is forever entwined in my Fiddleback memories also. She got her very first knife when she was 5, the same week I got my first Fiddleback. John Hutcheson, a long time and dear friend who has been making knives for about forty years now, wanted the honor of providing her with her first knife so he sort of jumped the gun and gave it to her a year sooner than I had planned to. So it and the original Fiddleback Bushfinger were the first knives she ever used outside our home where she had been helping me in the kitchen since she was three years old.
So since she was present for many of the first hard-use tests I did on my first Fiddleback Forge knife, I suppose it is only fitting that she will be there for the first hard-use tests I put one of Chris' knives through. This bad ass Apache will be riding along on my pack strap to be handy for the various tests it will be put through over the coming months
I also have a large knife made by Dylan....but damn looking at one of the areas we will be working in, Andy my friend, I think I am going to have to pick up a larger machete soon. It's getting rough here already....
.There is just something very special about carrying tools with you in the wilderness that are made by friends and craftsmen who are as passionate about what they do, as you are about what you do, and knowing that carry small pieces of them with you into the wilds and know that they are there with you in spirit.
Wow...sorry I rambled on so long fellas. Clearly I have had a lot of thoughts and emotions swirling around in my head the last few years. Thanks for being such wonderful friends and allowing me to express some of them here.
.
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It is amazing what kids can bounce back from. She was scampering around the Beckerhead Gathering a couple weeks ago as if nothing was amiss. Glad to see it is healing up well!
Mistwalker
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Yeah, unless she shows people her hand now, there are no signs she was recently injured so seriously, and I am very thankful for that. She definitely had a blast at Ethan's and wants to go back in October
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I enjoyed the read Brain! Make's me look forward to having kid(s) of my own eventually... though I don't see that happening on purpose for a while yet. Haha.
I always enjoy looking at your pictures and reading your musings, long or short, so thanks for providing them. That Apache is good looking! I finally have a knife from Chris headed my way. Can't wait to get my hands on it.
Glad Alayna's hand is healing well. Looking forward to seeing more of your adventures with her in the future.
I always enjoy looking at your pictures and reading your musings, long or short, so thanks for providing them. That Apache is good looking! I finally have a knife from Chris headed my way. Can't wait to get my hands on it.
Glad Alayna's hand is healing well. Looking forward to seeing more of your adventures with her in the future.
Comprehensivist
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Thanks for the back story on the knives and what you want to accomplish with Alayna in regard to learning outdoor skills in a safe way. That was a good read. I wish you both the best on your adventures.
Phil
Phil
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Great news Brian. Look at it this way, now she has one hell of a long life line in her palm.
Mistwalker
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Thank you! Yeah, there is nothing else out there quite as challenging or rewarding...or for showing you the complete range of your emotions as having and raising children.
And I am glad you enjoy them, I no I can go on at times, but didn't realize how long it would take to say all of that...
Chris does Really nice work. I talked to him about this one a while back. I waned something I could use and test in a wide assortment of environments from urban to woodland, and his Apache looked to be perfect for the edc role for all aspects to me. So I told him that I needed something nice that would be classy when seen yet discrete when necessary, small enough to tuck away yet big enough to work with, sleek enough to be really sexy yet not so ornate as to be "too pretty" hefty enough to be durable. It was a pretty complex order, but it is for parts of a pretty complex project. I think Chris nailed it spot on.
I am too, very much so. I had her help me with some material for a book that was a collaborative effort and published in the UK about 5 years ago. I have been looking forward to getting her more involved in my work for years.
Thank you Phil. I thought it was a story that should be shared, and it seemed like it would fit in here. I want to give to her the type of knowledge and understanding of our world that my father gave me...but remembering some of my mishaps I want to be a lot more hands-on with her during the initial training phases. My father grew up in a different world, and therefore so did I. I was a latchkey kid in the second grade so by the time I was 10 by the time mom and dad had come home from work I had finished my chores...usually..., eaten, and was five miles deep in the woods behind the house exploring. She has the same type of curiosity I had then, so I want to arm her with more knowledge than I was given.
Mistwalker
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Glad to see she's recovering so well Brian!
Hopefully, when she grows up, it'll become a fond reminder of precious time with her dad. I have two parallel cuts from my wrist to lower part of my right hand from when I was ~7 (went through a glass door, long story) that left a scar, but it's also become a good conversation piece
Hopefully, when she grows up, it'll become a fond reminder of precious time with her dad. I have two parallel cuts from my wrist to lower part of my right hand from when I was ~7 (went through a glass door, long story) that left a scar, but it's also become a good conversation piece
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Thanks for the update. Glad to see that she is healing.