Why I Shoot

Since it's yet again been a while, I've decided to share a personal paper I wrote for English this past month. I left out a bit (for privacy), so it may not flow as smoothly. Also, the font sizes are being silly. I hope you enjoy it though. :)

Why I Shoot

The breeze brushes my arms, and I feel the warm sun burning into my skin. The ground beneath my planted feet is uneven. Taking a deep breath, I pull the string back. It’s taut, and my sore fingers curve desperately around it. My other hand grasps the sticky rubber grip tightly, with a finger guiding the cold metal shaft as it slides back with the string. Plastic fletching brushes my cheek. Trusting my instinct, my fingers let go, and the string springs forward. The force of the motion vibrates briefly through me, and the metal shaft flies free through the air. It pierces the ground, inches short from the makeshift target where the upside down words “Bee Sweet” leer at me. I pull another arrow, carbon this time, from a quiver on my hip and nock it onto the bowstring. Impatiently, I pull it back. It barely reaches my cheek before I let go again. With a thud, it hits the upper corner of the target, sending the top box toppling backwards.

Growing up, I wanted to be a princess. Despite this, the influence of older brothers can be strong, especially when you’re stuck with one twenty-four seven for six months in a place far from home. Europe, with all of its historical roots, is about as far from home as you can get, especially for a nine year old. I wanted to be a princess, but it wasn’t long before the affects of my brother’s love of the Middle Ages, the intriguing history surrounding me, and the Lord of the Rings started to show in me. It was obvious that being a princess was a dull job, and that the world as I saw it needed to understand that killing dragons wasn’t just a job for knights. Sticks soon became the favorite toy as my brother Kenneth and I skidded around sharp corners on the slick floor of a 500 year-old, Tuscan villa where we lived, enacting battles. My brother’s advice still echoes in my ear: “Don’t spin around, or else your opponent will stab you in the back.” “Don’t swing your sword so much.” “Watch your opponent closely.” “Don’t flinch.” After a few more years I decided that dragons were actually nice creatures and that my swordswoman skills were minimal. I then turned my sights to history and writing, and to a handmade, roughhewn bow my brother had made with his friends and left unused in the basement. It hardly deserved the title of bow, but it worked. I played with it for months until my dad, trying to see how far it could shoot, snapped it in half. He must have felt bad, because he came home from work a few months later with a fifty-inch, twenty-pound, black, fiberglass longbow.

My right hand is sweating in its black glove as I return both arrows to my quiver and set the top box back onto the bottom “Bee Sweet” box. Both boxes are covered in holes. It’s not much of a target, but it’s better than destroying my arrows by shooting at the old birdhouse. After positioning myself at what I believe to be a good distance, I miss two times before I again hear the thud of a hit with my last carbon arrow. One out of three, I report to myself. It’s a weird habit, evaluating each round of shots by ratios of three. I suppose it makes sense though, considering I have three carbon arrows and three aluminum ones. An average of one out of three is pretty good, I’ve decided, especially for a hobby.

...

I barely hit the lower box and briefly wonder what it would be like to fly through the air like an arrow before I send another arrow flying after the first. It ricochets off the top of the boxes and does two summersaults before flopping down several yards behind the target. I grin and stride over to retrieve it. It was only a year ago that I realized my lack of a hobby. Growing up I had plenty of hobbies, those things you enjoy doing that you really don’t have to do, but midway through my teens I had unconsciously abandoned all of them. There was nothing I enjoyed doing just for the sake of doing it. Everything had a purpose or some role in my future. If it didn’t, then I rarely did it. It was then that I pulled out my bow again. After my dad helped me replace the bowstring, get new arrows, and find an armguard to protect my double-jointed arm, I started to shoot again. I soon realized how relaxing it was not to care if I didn’t hit the target every time. Being outside, listening to the birds, breathing, and hitting something became a refuge. Time was forgotten, anxiety let go, and long held frustrations released.

...

In this little world of mine, I can imagine myself catching the wind and soaring like the hawk that just then swoops low over lawn before flying upwards at a steep climb with one powerful movement of his wings.

I have a decided preference for the longbow, but that is probably a biased preference, considering I’ve never used a compound, and my brother’s 40-pound recurve wastes my arm strength. Not only that, I have a deep fascination for the medieval English longbow. Usually taller than the archer, it was a bow renowned for its remarkable affective range of two hundred yards, and the average archer could shoot at least ten rounds a minute. In short, the longbow made England powerful in the 14^th and 15^th centuries. King Henry V was victorious at the Battle of Agincourt on St. Crispin’s Day 1415 only because of the longbow, even against utterly hopeless odds. Five thousand ill and exhausted English foot soldiers and archers battled in rain and mud against at least thirty thousand French knights. The English were still victorious.

I don’t attempt to see how far I can shoot, fearful of either losing my arrow or harming one of my neighbor’s horses in the corral behind my house. But I doubt my bow could shoot as far as a medieval archer would be required to shoot, considering it’s only four feet tall. This doesn’t bother me, though, as I again aim carefully at the target. The bow creaks at the tension, and my left arm is shaking slightly. I know that I’m drawing to the end of the twenty minutes. If perfectionism isn’t my fault, being obsessive- compulsive is, and I can’t bring myself to go inside until I hit the target at least once more. A bird above is singing, and I am calm as I breathe out. My fingers loose their grip and the arrow whistles slightly as it soars. I watch it, my emotions rocking back and forth between apprehensiveness and contentment. It slices through the air and, with an echoing thud, pierces the heart of the target. The startled bird flies over me with an agitated chirp. I stride to the target and collect my arrows. Taking a final deep breath of the spring air, I’m ready to leave. I carry my target inside with a smile.

(a picture from last fall)