By Ben Long

Ted Cook was an old man when I met him — a retired hunting guide who worked the Peace River country of Alberta. Ted grew up among the Cree Indians in the Canada bush in a world that simply doesn’t exist anymore.

My father had hunted with him, and I met Ted in Edmonton when I was about as tall as my father’s belt buckle. I spent the day listening to Ted’s stories and looking at moose antlers. When it was time to leave, Ted casually reached into a desk drawer and flipped an object into my hands.

"Good knife," he said. "Good Swedish steel. It’s a Mora."

It was my first belt knife and, in spite of my father’s misgivings, he let me keep it. It took me 30-plus years to fully appreciate the gift.

Mora is a region in central Sweden, known for its steelworks and a long-distance ski race. But "a Mora" is a kind of knife. Not a brand, exactly, but a style made by a few companies. The one Ted gave me was a classic: wooden handle painted red, brass collar, no finger guard, straight, single-bevel carbon blade of 3 - inches.

Mora represents a rare phenomenon these days: It’s utterly utilitarian, practically indestructible, easy to sharpen into a very durable edge. And cheap. To this day you can pick them up new for less than $10.

Swedish forges have churned out Moras for centuries. Moras have been sold and swapped around the earth’s Northern Boreal Forests since the day Hudson’s Bay Co. traders were found in forts, not shopping malls. Probably, the Mora has skinned more reindeer, caribou, moose, muskoxen and bear and kindled more life-saving campfires than all modern brands combined. It is safe to say the Mora has withstood the test of time.

The Mora is standard gear for many hard-core survival and bushcraft buffs —†and an expert on survival will tell you that a knife is the most important survival tool of all. I came to more fully appreciate the Mora when I saw it in the hands of expert wilderness skills instructor David Cronenwett, of Dillon, Mont. Give David a Mora, some flint and a stick (which he calls a baton) and he can fell trees, split firewood, make twine, build a shelter, spark a fire, stay alive.

David also has a box he calls the "knife graveyard" full of busted knives his students brought to his field classes. It is full of very expensive, name-brand knives that broke under the strain of survival. There’s not a Mora in the box. David carries two Moras every time he goes afield.

The Mora has one great shortcoming: It is as ugly as an inbred ape. It comes in a ghastly plastic sheath. The carbon steel soon loses its gloss. You might politely call the handles "unimaginative."

Some folks dress up their Moras with fancy sheaths and custom handles. Not me. Since when is an elk hunt a fashion show?

I will pay extra for a handsome rifle and will never carry an ugly one. A rifle is something you look at in your hands all day. A knife is a tool that can save your life. In a bad pinch, do you want something that is pretty to look at, or something that, come hell and high water, will work?

I cannot afford to collect rifles, so I collect knives. I have high-tech knives, Inuit ulus, handmade sheath knives with fancy handles of apricot and mountain mahogany, an ebony-handled pocketknife my grandfather gave me, a classic Buck folding hunter with my name engraved given to me by Chuck Buck himself. And I use most all of them. But a Mora always stays in the pack. Other Moras are stashed in kitchen drawers and in toolboxes and glove compartments.

That old Mora that Ted Cook gave me as a boy? I once gutted a deer in a snowstorm and left it on a stump. I dragged the deer to my rig, and realized I had left the knife behind. By the time I returned, the snow had covered everything. The next spring I checked every stump, but couldn’t find the knife.

Ted wouldn’t mind. He would just reach into a drawer and casually toss another one in my hands.

"Good knife," he would say. "It’s a Mora."