There is not really an adequate means to describe the feeling of picking up this rifle today. Pardon the poor iPhone photos and screen grabs from my instagram, as I had little time to take good shots or to upload the few I did grab today. I assure you, there will be more to come.
The drive was horrendous. Thirty miles out of town, into the Mountains, snow blindly whipping across the road, with logging trucks appearing to flee the winter blizzard on their final run back to town, pulling clouds of dry snow in their wake.
Arrival to a snowed in cabin with wood smoke issuing from the chimney and the scent of a warm hearth is a welcome sight in Montana during the late days of December. Our friend the gunmaker, greeted us with his signature, "Hey buddy". The way he says, "buddy" usually rolls off slow as if hinted with some kind hospitality, as if he was indeed your old friend. He offers hot coffee, he packs his pipe, and the talk of guns and history begins. His smile and greet are as warm as the room itself. There is no other place like this you can go. To stand in his shop, to hear him speak, to share his presence is indeed great.
It appears as little has changed in the shop. The wood stove cracks, the smell of cavendish pipe tobacco permeates the log walls, tools, oils and rifles are the decor. He reaches over to a rack of rifles and pulls the one, who's glint of brass caught my eye as a Lancaster immediately upon entering the tight quarters, handing it to me. "Here's your rifle".
Impeccable. Speechless. Beyond what I imagined. Silver wire inlay? That was not even in my wildest dreams? Details and engraving in places I hadn't even considered.
The daisy flower Dickert patch box was something I could not take my eyes off of. It was as if Dickert himself was handing me a rifle. The slender hold, the balance, the blended smoothness of the transitions from metal to wood and back again, were as if magic was used in the creation of this rifle. How a rough block of maple, square and primitive, was married to equally rough casts of brass and steel turned into this slender object of Rococo beauty is beyond my ability to understand for I as well as many humans, lack the ability to create this sort of beauty with hands and focus.
This rifle is so beautiful, it brings with it a new fear. I now have a fear of harming it, dropping it, causing a flaw upon it. Time will hopefully instill in me the confidence to bear this arm, and bear it with the pride of what it represents. Many carried Dickerts before me, and this rifle will one day be carried by my posterity. There lies ahead a future of stories and hunts, shoots and treks, where it shall be me and this Dickert Rifle.
Oh how beautiful this rifle is.
