There should be a German loan word for the pleasure that one gets from finally using something that one bought but apparently didn’t need (yet). That has been one of my biggest joys here, using those wishful things that I’d paid good money for but never put into action. For example, the pseudo-military trenching tool, a little folding shovel that I’d bought on a whim. Perhaps I was envisioning having to dig my Subaru out of a mud hole while crossing through the Darien Gap. It also has this nifty saw blade that recesses into the handle, for severing that climbing vine that’s holding you under water or limbing trees to make a shelter. It had been lolling around in my gear bag, pristine in its unscratchedness for years. Actually, I did get a little gratification in using it once to dig a latrine hole while car camping.
Here its had heavy use for burrowing postholes, digging the receptacle for my kitchen sink drain and excavating the mondo outhouse pit. The fact that Richard was able to use a clamshell scavenged off the beach to dig his postholes is besides the point. I still use the shovel regularly to lift ashes out of my wood stove and to fling dog turds into the salal. It’s got a satisfying patina of rust all over it now. It looks like it’s been to war and back.
In this class of previously underutilized instruments, falls my Leatherman. I’d bought it because I don’t think that on any of the backcountry trips that I’d been on in recent memory – paddling coastal waters, climbing through the Rockies, or dog sledding in the Arctic – was there a guide who didn’t have one. Funnily enough, the guides I had on other trips, who lived out on the land full-time, never had anything of the sort. Usually they’d do everything with an age-stained knife that looked like it wasn’t worthy of cutting soft cheese but apparently was plenty capable of rendering a caribou into cutlets without much fuss.
I’ve had more Swiss Army knives than most people have had hot apple ciders. Usually I find them. And then lose them, myself. Somehow I went almost four decades of modest outdoor living without a Leatherman. And when I picked one up in the store it seemed on the heavy side. The guy behind the counter – a known knife-freak– assured me that it weighed less than all the zipper-pulls on my gear put together. So, replace the zipper-pulls with string and pack this bad boy instead. Hmm.
So I bought it and diligently put it away in my desk drawer. Where it remained even here in the cabin. With this harsh, sandy and salty environment it could do nothing but get rusty, gummed up, or plain lost. Finally, doing a work trade with Toby, I noticed that he was always carrying one. I asked him about it and he pointed out the obvious foolishness of putting a tool in a drawer for safekeeping. So I busted it out.
And there was that glorious instant when I actually used it – to remove a staple from the tarpaper tacked onto my cabin. Which might sound mundane but I was balanced high up on some jerry-rigged scaffolding that Toby had put together, holding onto the end of a heavy roll of felt with one hand and flicking open the tool with the other, extracting the offending staple with the one-two punch of a bit that was either an awl or flat screwdriver, then the pliers. I could feel a surge of energy coursing from the tool, down my arm and into the core of my gear-head soul. I raised my Leatherman overhead and forked lightning shattered the air around me. Then Toby told me to “please, hurry the eff up,” as he was waiting at the other end of the felt.
Since then I have the Leatherman riding in a holster on my hip, like a service sidearm. And it feels potent with potential. Sometimes I even get the idea that I should be able to build an entire cabin using just the Leatherman (I would pound 4-inch nails with the butt end protruding from my fist. How badass would that be?)
Long before that turning point though, I’d noticed Mer always had her Leatherman pouch on her belt, even when she was going to a party. I thought that maybe it was worn in an ironic fashion accessory sense. In the past few days, however, I realize how often she must have cause to use it in her daily life. I passed her on the road, on her way to work on a wind turbine system that she’d installed for a neighbour. I offered to join her and help. She allowed that I could come and perhaps hold the flashlight for her. Which is exactly what I did.
Electricity scares me stupid. She had to install a resistor the size of a rolling pin into the system. When she pulled out large cable cutters and went to clip something within the jumble of wires, switches and LEDs, I relived every tense moment in every bomb deactivation scene that I’d ever seen in my life. It turned out to be worthwhile, since I was then called upon to further justify the space that I was taking up in the utility shed by helping strip the insulation back from the freshly clipped wires.
Out came my Leatherman. Which stayed out for further use as pliers to hold onto the ring terminals which Mer heated with a propane torch and filled with molten solder. Finally, I used the metal file on my Leatherman to clean off the excess solder and expose fresh copper. In a matter of minutes I’d used more attachments on the Leatherman than in all the rest of my life put together.
As if this weren’t enough, the next evening I was driving behind Mer, heading back from town to Tow Hill in a storm when she pulled over. Her radiator hose had split and was spewing liquid. Out came her Leatherman (or ‘Leatherperson’ as she rightfully calls it). I don’t know any women back in the city in such an instance who would stand ankle-deep in a puddle on a night when the wind is driving the rain sideways, calmly pop the hood and rummage around her back seat for spare parts. Actually, I don’t know any men who would for that matter.
I did my best to help. I held the flashlight. But I did also get to bust out my Leatherman and use the wire cutters to clip a zap strap holding some cables together. Words cannot express how gratifying that felt.
Finally getting to use something for what it was intended is akin to that feeling of losing something important then finding it again. Which I’m sure will be something else that I’ll get to experience with my Leatherman down the road.