Foreward
By Pat Ditto
Amanda and I recently camped at Bobby Brown Park in Elberton Georgia. A beautiful hidden gem, Bobby Brown Park offers 665 acres of outdoor recreation in Elbert County, Georgia, and access to the 71,100-acre Clarks Hill Lake. The park is named in memory of Navy Lt. Robert T. Brown, who gave his life in WWII.
It was just after Christmas and we practically had the whole park to ourselves. It had been a hectic holiday and we were ready for the quiet solitude of camping on the lake shore. Although the park offers a veritable smorgasbord of amenities, the one we took the most advantage of was the archery range.
This is where I leave you. Normally the following words would be my “just the facts”, meat and potatoes writing. This time you get the writing of my wife, Amanda. Who is much, much better at writing than I am. The only cavate is she writes where her words take her. I hope you enjoy her take on our adventure and if you still need a certain amount of meat and potatoes, watch the video!
The Female Archer
Women wielding bows is not a new concept. In fact, we see lots of women in myths,(think war monger Greek Goddess, Athena), Stories (Suzanne Collins’ rebel archer, Katniss Everdeen) and legends (alas, China’s Milan) that have lodged their respective points of view into our collective understanding of just how women came to be archers.
Men and Meat
Survival is what more than likely prompted that first women to pick up a bow and arrow, nocking, drawing and releasing into the very thing that either threatened or ensured her survival.
From a distance, she would have been able to fell an invader of her village without the need for close hand to hand combat. The strength required to pierce the heart of an enemy was aided by the physics of the bow, pull of the string, and the weight of the arrow. She might not be able to lift and swing a heavy sword, but with a bow and arrow, she was just as lethal.
The archetype assigned to ancient women was “gather” in that hunter/gather phrase of human development. However, an alternative view is that women were just as much hunters as men were and provided heavily to the meat in the food chain of village life.
Today’s Invaders
Move forward a couple of millennia, and you find that women are still picking up bows, but the are aiming for something slightly different from physical survival. Women, going into combat and facing enemies carry different weapons now, and protection from a modern day invader has been reduced to keeping ants out of the sugar bowl.
Yes, women still bow hunt, we shoot elk, deer, fish and just about anything else you can skin and eat. I personally do not bow hunt, only because I am not the good of an archer; I do not strive to land my arrow tip in the kill zone each and every time I pull back. But there are many women who do, and with perfection, take down large animals with their archery skills, still feeding their families. However, if one of these women had an off year of hunting, I’ll wager that her family more than likely won’t starve.
So, if we can lock our doors at night or run to the grocery store when we need a pound of ground meat, why do women still pick up their bows?
Competition and Meditation
In 2024, the Summer Olympics was televised for the world to see, and while Simon Biles and flipping gymnastics teammates drew the attention of many a dewy-eyed girl, there was another arena where women were reenacting an ancient skill that they had been performing for thousands of years-that of archery.
Opportunities to showcase a woman’s archery prowess abound in today’s world. From youth programs such as 4-H, Scouts, National Archery In Schools Program (NASP) to regional competitions for both traditional and compound archers, a contemporary woman has a platform in which she can satisfy her need to best herself. Because in archery, that is exactly who you are competing with – yourself.
Because archery is a solitary pursuit, it has also been used as a vehicle for meditation. Zen In The Art Of Archery – a thin book, as it should be when addressing anything to do with Zen – outlines the practice of Eastern meditation using the bow and arrow. And this is where my archer’s heart lies, in the stillness of the moment.
No Mind
I’ll start by saying, I’m no expert at meditation, but I do try, and I have been the most successful at attaining that pure moment of fluid emptiness when I am doing archery. Every year, I re-watch the Movie The Last Samurai, so I can witness, again, the visual representation of that “no mind” I am trying to achieve each time I pull back the the bow string. Civil War vet, Nathan (played by Tom Cruise) is plagued by all the distractions of what is around him while trying to defeat his Samurai tutor. The Samurai in training has “too many minds”. I love that saying, because thats actually what meditation is trying to alleviate.
I think most good archers are in a state of meditation, whether they know it or not, in that moment when the archer is no longer the archer, but become empty and part of the flow of energy, connecting to all things, including the target that he or she is about to pierce. When I shoot my best I am thinking about nothing. When I shoot my worst, I am thinking about many things
I’ll be honest, this is not the blog I think my husband wanted me to write when I offered up a story during our recent visit to Bobby Brown Park in Elberton, Georgia. But this is what came came out, because I was able to find my “no mind” state during our stay.
The Rarest of Targets – Quiet
We camped 3 nights on Clarks Hill Lake in this county park, shooting on their 3-D target range two of those days.
It’s not often you get a target range to yourself – but we did for both days. Cold (by Florida standards), misty and gray, the trail of 20 targets meandered across top of worn down mountains. The handiwork of Hurricane Helena was evident, huge oaks and elms lying twisted and dead in the valleys below. Surrounded by the surviving sturdier trees, Pat and I soaked in the quietness of the day. Bird calls, the rustle of fallen leaves blown by the wind, the echoing thwack of an arrow hitting foam.
When we left for our camping trip right after Christmas, I had just finished a month of non-stop, many minds existence. So many minds that I’d even forgotten my own daughter’s birthday, while staying at her house over the holiday. I was a crappy mom because I had put so many things into my mind, but left out the one that should have been most important. I apologized to my daughter and left for camping filled with guilt.
Our first night sleeping at the campground my husband said i talked in my sleep, saying “What an a$$hole!” He thought I was talking to him, but it was another in a dream I was having. A nocturnal insight into my state of mental health. Luckily, we shot that morning and at each stake, I had the chance to practice “no mind” in the stillness of the woods. After finishing our first round and driving back to the campground, Pat spotted 2 yearling does. We stopped the truck, watched, and then I rolled down my window. One of the deer began to walk toward the truck and soon she was at my door, her deep brown eyes staring intently into mine. She was probably used to someone feeding her, but I wanted to believe otherwise. I was starting to come out of my crazed, multi-lane state of mind and she was acknowledging that.
Scorecards are a great source of honest, self-reflection. Day one I had missed half of the targets on the range. Day two I missed only 3 and had just slight mumblings during my night’s sleep. no eruption of cuss words. Why? There were several factors, including choosing to shoot from stakes that better suited my purpose, instead of trying to best my husband. I had more moments of clarity: focus, breathe, pull, breathe, release, breathe, connection with the target, breathe.
Find Your Purpose
If you have stayed with me in this blog, then you are probably thinking archery might be for you, if it already isn’t. Archery can be about hunting, competition, physical exercise or just fun. There are many planes an archer can exist on. I hope I’ve given you a peek into another realm of the bow and arrow, one where your mind comes away scrubbed and refreshed.
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