Whittlin’ Wastler
In 1986, my parents brought back a small Swiss Army knife from a trip to Switzerland. Red, engraved, meant to last. I was five when I cut myself with mine. It was bad enough that it went back in its box and up into a cabinet I couldn’t reach. On my sixth birthday, my dad handed it back and showed me how to use it.
This image originally appeared on Ryan Plett’s YHBTI, August 2009.
“Cut away from yourself,” he said.
It was a simple instruction, and as it turns out, it was a permanent one. I haven’t sliced my finger with that knife since. I still have it. I carried it everywhere for years. Even as an adult, I held onto it more tightly than I should have, once or twice convincing a TSA agent to send it home rather than lose it for good. It’s a small thing. But it’s stayed with me.
During COVID, after we moved back to the Chicago area, I bought a circular saw.
There were projects to do: shelving, small home repairs. It was the kind of work that doesn’t have patience for perfect.
It had been years since I’d used one with any regularity. Long enough that I had to reacquaint myself with the weight of it, that sweet sound, the smell of clean-cut sawdust and the feel of guiding it through wood without forcing it.
My first few cuts weren’t all that clean. I told myself they weren’t supposed to be.
What I noticed, though, was something I hadn’t expected: the return of a certain kind of attention to detail, the kind that eradicates distraction, the kind begging me to be present. Not just because there was a small margin for error, but also because this was a skill I possessed well, one which I came to naturally.
I hadn’t forgotten how to use this tool. I’d forgotten how it felt to work with it.
This past week, high winds and a rowdy thunderstorm brought down a sizable branch in our front yard, not so large to matter to anyone else, yet large enough that I needed to address it with loppers and saws.
As I made each cut into its extensive web of branches, I’d catch myself thinking about what to do with all this wood: mulch? A Wonderboy baseball bat à la The Natural? With each step of the process to break it down, I thought about how I could cure the wood shape it into something useful. That’s when it hit me, I could whittle these small logs into a set of small spoons for Christmas. Something simple. Something made slowly.
It won’t be perfect, but I won’t have wasted it nor my efforts to care for it in the process.
There’s a difference between using a tool and understanding it. That first Swiss Army knife gave me direction. The circular saw alighted in me a direct and poignant kind of attention. Felling this branch felt like something else: an opportunity to turn water into wine, to cut it loose and repurpose it. I’m not going to force it into shape, I’m not going to rush the process. I intend to stay with it long enough to see what it wants to become.
Spoons? Spreaders? Rolling pins? I’m not sure yet what I’ll manifest from these branches, but I sure know where to start:
“Cut away from yourself.”
Originally published in The All Plaidout Almanac on Substack, March 30, 2026.