Kenny’s indelible bond was chipped from a piece of flint | Sam Venable
My life is worlds apart, literally and figuratively, from that of Espen Finstad. (Cross my heart, I didn’t make up his name, or the story you’re about to read.)
Finstad is a Norwegian archaeologist who specializes in glacial research. I’m a Tennessee typist who specializes in newspaper drivel.
But we share a link that almost makes us blood kin.
That thought crossed my mind as I read about a discovery Finstad recently made in the Jotunheimen Mountains. It was a wooden arrow, complete with a quartzite tip and feather fletching. It’s estimated to be 3,000 years old.
Finstad is among many scientists searching for artifacts in melting Norwegian permafrost. They’ve found some 4,000 items, including clothing, tools and weapons.
Similar work is taking place in Alaska, Siberia and Mongolia. It’s the silver lining of global climate change. But time is the enemy. Unless these objects are located as soon as they emerge from their frozen tombs, then professionally preserved, they’re quickly consumed by the elements.
As reported by Livia Albeck-Ripka in The New York Times, this arrow is “among (Finstad’s) top-10 favorites because its near-pristine state helped him envisage the lives of those who had lived and died in the same mountains: ‘You also kind of feel a special connection to the people who lost it.' "
Amen, brother. I’ve been lucky enough to find a few arrowheads while roaming the outdoors. Every time, I’m awestruck by the notion that another human being created it centuries earlier. I always wonder, “Are my fingers the first to touch it since then?”
My old friend Kenny Carey felt the same way.
Kenny, a Greenback resident who died in 2009, was the finest archer I’ve ever known. He was a serious student not only of this ancient weaponry but also the habits and habitats of the animals he hunted. During his adventurous life, Kenny slew more than 100 deer with a modern version of “stick and string.”
One of those whitetails is particularly memorable because two people had a hand in its demise. The first was a long-ago Native American, probably Cherokee.
Kenny often searched for arrowheads near the Little Tennessee River in the pre-Tellico Lake era. One day, a partially completed flint point, likely tossed aside by the maker, caught his eye. Back home, Kenny carefully rechipped it to razor-sharpness and attached it to an arrow. That autumn, after a careful stalk, he slowly drew that same arrow and dead-centered a buck behind the shoulders.
As he aw-shucksed to me later, “I just finished the job that Indian started.”
I’d like to think those two old woodsmen have spent a lot of fireside time rehashing the event in their happy hunting ground.
Sam Venable’s column appears every Sunday. Contact him at sam.venable@outlook.com.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Sam Venable: Kenny’s indelible bond was chipped from a piece of flint
