Hunting For Arrows

    Today is the winter solstice, at my house near Seattle the sun rise was at 7:55am and it will set at 4:20pm. It’s raining buckets right now; the sky is grey and overcast. It will start to get dark around 3:30 this afternoon. In past years I've struggled with the impending darkness this time of year. I would leave my house to work in the city at 5:50am and get back home around 5:00pm. It was dark when I left home, dark when I arrived at the office, and dark when I came back home. If I didn't make time during the day to get outside, I could be convinced the sun never came up. 3 to 4 nights a week I would head over to the barn and get time in with Joe under the lights of the indoor arena. If I worked late, there was a good chance he would get an extra night off. I would crawl into bed exhausted knowing that I would be up when the alarm rang at 5:00am to do it all over again. Every year I look forward to December 22nd, when the sun will set one minute later. Sometime in th...

 90% of the practice shots I take are on the ground, not on my horse. I ride my horse 6 days a week, and I only shoot off him maybe twice a month. I'm sure I'll shoot off him more during competition season, but at this time I don't want to drill on him. Joe still looks forward to that moment in the arena when I pick up my bow and I don't want to do anything to change that. My riding sessions focus on everything in between the shots, another blog post for another day. I want to be fully confident in the shots I do take from my horse's back, so I put in my hours of ground practice each week in order to become a better archer, and worthy partner to my war horse. What should the idea archery practice session on the ground look like? I've been practicing 3-5 times a week for the past year and I really have no clue. I know what I'm doing is working for me at this point in my progression, most days I'm making it up as I go. I have a goal of shooting 500 arr...

  In my early 20’s I worked at a horse farm. By “work” I mean hard physical labor for 8 hours a day. I cleaned 26 unmatted stalls, feed and watered 40 horses twice a day, swept the aisleway non-stop and raked up the outside areas. In the winter months I worked in all kinds of weather and had the added muscle building chores of cleaning out flooded stalls when the automatic waterer pipes burst, and digging trenches through the mud filled paddocks. I loved the work, but it was a “job” and I eventually moved on to a less physical, better paying jobs with career paths. Fast forward 20 plus years and it blows my mind that my favorite part of my day right now is the extra hour I spend at the barn after working with Joe. I make the time to clean his stall, sweep the aisleway, water the horses, pick up things that are out of place and rake anything that needs it. It’s become my “Zen time” and it takes me full circle to an experience that 20-year-old me couldn’t make sense of. A memory th...