Ryan Rickerson likes to make a point
A stone point, to be exact. Rickerson, of Warren County, has been flintknapping for 11 years. Flintknapping - the crafting of chipped or flaked stone tools and weapons - is just one of Rickerson’s many primitive pastimes, but it’s the one he loves the most.
A friend asked him if he wanted to go to a knap-in over a decade ago, said Rickerson, and it was the first time he’d ever heard the term. “I figured, you know, alright. I’ll go with you and see what it’s all about.” He came home from his first knap-in - a sort of flintknapping convention where
people from around the country sit together and talk, tap chert into arrowheads with soft hammers, and simply fellowship with one anotherknowing that he had a new hobby.
“How long is this one going to last,” Rickerson said his wife, April, asked him when he got back. “I’m known to tend to go through hobbies,” Rickerson admitted. Knapping, though, has managed to hold his attention for a long while even by his count.
For the Union Carpenter, knapping has presented the ultimate challenge. “It’s like a puzzle,” he said. “I still don’t know everything about it. You have to look at a stone and kind of get to know how it’s going to break, how it’s going to chip, before you even start working with it. I still haven’t made a perfect point.”
And, said Rickerson, while his skill has grown in both breadth and depth over the past decade, until he makes that perfect point his passion is unlikely to wane.
Part of what he loves so much about knapping, said Rickerson, is that “it’s taken a while just to get to this point. It’s a hobby you develop a mastery of over time.”
But why flintknapping? Why the buckskin tunics, and the firebuilding, and the whole rustic aesthetic itself?
“Stuff like this,” said Rickerson, “it’s our most human commonality.” Thousands of years ago, he explains, people worked together to keep entire tribes alive using primitive skills we don’t think much of today. But, said Rickerson, if a bit of infrastructure fails or we lose a convenience or two, it’s going to be the people who can build you a fire, who can carve an arrowhead out of a rock and hunt you a deer, who people will be looking for. Rickerson even started hosting self- organized knap-ins at his own home about four years ago, he said.
“That first year I had 40 people show up. The next year it was 80. Then 100. I ran out places to park people,” Rickerson said.
Eventually, he had to find a new venue for his regional knap-ins, because so many people would come back the next year, with friends in tow. So last year, Rickerson said, he held the event at Chapman Dam State Park in Clarendon, Pa.
That’s when Jenn Moore, the park’s Environmental Education Specialist through the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR), discovered Ryan. He was surrounded by people at one of the pavilions in the park, chipping away at an arrowhead and sharing educational and interesting information with those who showed up.
As part of her job, Moore looks for events that match the mission and aesthetic of the park, and she said she was excited to work with Ryan to bring the knap-in back for the post-COVID era.
Rickerson, too, is excited to be bringing the knap-in back to the public eye. This year’s flint knap-in is scheduled for Saturday, May 1 from 10-3. Registration is required - and spots are filling fast - to participate in the hands-on programming, which includes demonstrations of flintknapping, firebuilding, blacksmithing, and more. There is no age limit to participate, but parents must be onsite with children.
Which, for Rickerson, would be the ideal audience. His passion for primitive skills has led Rickerson to develop friendships with lots of other people in his area who share it. The trouble is, he said, he’s one of few people his age interested in such skills. Eventually, said Rickerson, he’s going to run out of friends to sit in the garage and knap with. That, he said, isn’t going to work for him. So he looks for opportunities to share his primitive skills - imperfect though they may yet be - with young people whenever possible.
“I just wish I could tell kids, it’s fun to do things with your hands too,” Rickerson said. “The great thing about all these skills is you don’t have to be perfect at it, but you get better the more you do.” That, said Rickerson, can be empowering for kids. To know that they have even just a few small survival skills can empower and excite them to learn more and that, he said, is the best thing he’s ever done with his rustic know-how.
Registration for the knap-in is open through Friday, April 23. Those interested can register by calling Jen Moore at (814) 723-0259 or emailing jennmoore@pa.gov . Overnight camping is also available at Chapman Dam, as are a number of other amenities. Go to visitparks. com or call 888-PAPARKS (727-2757) to learn more.