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I’ve had many knives in my life. From my first Opinel n°8, with a broken point because we threw it at trees, like in the movies, to a Leatherman, from the Laguioles to a Français made by Atelier Perceval (my most beautiful knife, I still miss it, I left it with a girl), I have forgotten most others. I lose them quite often. The only one which stayed with me for long is a Laguiole-style Poyet-Coursolle, stupidly called Ranger’s Knife (may the waders of the idiot who came up with that leak forever). I bought it just before entering the hardest part of my time in the army, like a hunderd years ago, and strangely enough it refused to get lost.
But my knife par excellence, The one I buy again and again, and I pack wherever I’ll really need a knife is a Victorinox Rucksack. I got my first in Buenos Aires, a year when I lived near the Plaza del Congreso. I came there with a Leatherman, I was very pleased with my american piece of gear. It was a brand new thing, the multitools, it sounded great. Then, after draging the darn thing around in my backpack, heavy as hell and mostly useless, I grew tired of it and gave it to Neno, a Uruguayan buddy who actually needed one and was dead broke. There was on Paraná one of those shops we all like, outdoors stuff. It’s still there, it’s called La Caleta. We were leaving for Punta Arenas, then the Tierra del Fuego, so I bought a pair of gloves and a Rucksack.
At that time, it was mainly a matter of budget. But it made its way into my heart and stayed there. To begin with, it’s perfect. Costs nothing, weights very little, and it will do anything you could possibly ask a folding knife to do if you’re neither Rambo nor Mc Gyver. But it got me with the red plastics. Swiss Army knives have their share of history, but those are above all very modern products, a desincarnated piece of engineering, an object without a terroir. And that’s precisely what suits me well. I look at it with kid’s eyes, play with the blades. I use it. I lose it. And the one which takes its place is the very same, anonymous, interchangeable, and in spite of that, maybe because of that, my favorite knife.