➳ Archery ➳

I don't somehow think these were the bows she was thinking of...

I am a bit of a frilly Romantic /Aristocrat/Goth type person, yes, but bows are not really a decorative device I am in to. That and I wanted an excuse to talk about archery, not that I really need an excuse...

Archery is one of my favourite sports. I started in 2010, when I signed up to the beginner's course at my (then) local archery club, but had been wanting to take the sport up properly for a rather long time, after having had a go at summer camp years and years ago. My partner, Raven, is a keen archer, and talked me into joining. Je ne regrette rien! While there is a local archery club to me now, here in the Highlands, when I last enquired they weren't taking on new members, which is a shame because it means right now I have no club and no space to practice. 
Bah humbug!

I think what I love most about archery is that it is a sport that puts me in a state of absolute focus and concentration. I can shut out my worries and concentrate on getting an arrow as close to the centre of the target as possible. This sort of state exists in many sports, but I think target sports in general are different in so much that it is concentration on a single act (one that can be divided into smaller sections from stance, raising the bow, drawing, aiming, breathing, releasing etc.), not the "thinking on your feet" concentration of sports such as roller-derby, basketball, volleyball, ultimate frisbee etc. This is not to say I don't enjoy that sort of sport - I do, and I either currently do or have done all of the above and enjoyed them - it's just that archery fills a certain niche for me. 

I have been plinking at Raven's parent's farm, and that too is enjoyable to me but I think there is something extra that comes from  drawing a bow with my own strength, that being translated through the mechanical advantage of springy limbs, and that being why an arrow flies. As you might tell from that sentence, I shoot a recurve bow. It's not that I think that such things as compound bows and crossbows are 'cheating', it's just I prefer to have less of a mechanical advantage. I'd love to shoot a long bow, and I'd love to get involved in kyudo. 

Random fact: I do some things left-handed, and other things right-handed. Archery is something I can only do left-handed.

I think for a lot of American readers especially, archery is almost synonymous with bow-hunting. Bow-hunting is illegal in the UK. I am not the sort of person that would kill an animal for pleasure, anyway, and do not see any form of hunting as 'sport' - if I needed food desperately, I'd hunt to eat, but I would not see it as a pleasurable act.  

An odd thing I have noticed is that quite few of my fellow archers are fellow Pagans, not a vast number, but a higher percentage than simply the percentage of the population that are Pagans. Maybe it is because of its ancient heritage and a lot of Pagans are also people into 'historical things', maybe because of its connections to deities such as Artemis. To be honest I have no idea why, only conjecture. Any Pagans into archery who would like to elucidate me on the matter are welcome to do so.