I met up with Joe at the Western Carolina University Library & Mountain Heritage Center in Cullowhee NC and spent a delightful time with Pam Meister, the director and Jason Brady who is the Special Collections guy...... And special is right - very right...... Among the treasures he curates are the intact journals and notebooks that Horace Kephart used when writing Camping & Woodcraft, Our Southern Highlander's and his other tomes...... The Kephart display, which will be up until September, is really quite nice.....They have one of his campsites set up with his tent, sleeping bag, cover and air mattress and other accouterments.....The tent, and seeping gear were from Abercrombie & Fitch which at the time was one of, if not the preeminent, outfitters in our country..... They outfitted many a grand expedition before they became just another wussified fashion brand lost in the merchantile swamps......
And then there was the knife........
It was the Four inch version and it was the proto for the production version(I think)...... it was used a LOT...... The Museum thinks the haft is walnut but, I speculate that it might be chestnut..... We could not hold it but my examination shows the haft to be a bit rounder than the production knife and the blade sharpened so often that i am certain that the original convexes have changed quite a bit from when it left the hands of the blacksmith.....
I found it quite special for a whole host of reasons other than it's incredible provenance...... A fine tool designed by a truly brilliant man with more"dirt time" than almost anyone and who could communicate his needs well enough to see it into production...... Wow, just WOW.....
Thanks again to Pam and Jason......
All in all one of the better days of my life........
Pics will be coming from Joe and they will happen..........
Ethan
P.s..... The notebooks, notes and journals are being digitized and many are already available online....Check it out and if you can visit the WCU and enjoy........ e
More to come......