Regardless of your heritage, your ancestor's hunted with bows and arrows–it may have been many generations ago and on another continent, but each of us had ancestors that used these tools for survival. Whether a connection to my past or just a desire to practice ancient arts, the draw of archery has pulled at me from childhood and well into adulthood. Some of my most spectacular memories were obtained with a traditional recurve bow in my hand and cedar wood arrows quivered on my back. The vivid memories of the first arrow that I ever shot at a deer are now forty years old, and are the focus of this little story.
Mid morning on a sunny, but chilly, autumn day, I was sitting on the downhill side of a young pine tree watching a doe and her nearly adult-sized fawns play in the creek below. Some time after the three deer wondered off in search of a bedding area I heard a loud snort over my right shoulder. I turned toward the sound and its source stood twenty feet behind me. After his short pause to snort, the large buck with the most amazing set of antlers proceeded to trot down the hill. I rose to one knee and fumbled with nocking my arrow as he passed ten feet to my right. By the time I had an arrow nocked and my bow drawn, the deer had trotted directly in front of me and stood perpendicular to the future flight of my drawn arrow. I released the arrow from my bow, and time stood still.
I heard the reverberation of the string as it released the arrow and watched the arrow's fletching pass by my bow–I can still see the yellow index fletching and the two other bright green feathers pass my hand. The smell of the pine tree rushed passed the chill on my nose and left an indelible imprint on a handful of neurons as I watched the flight of the arrow proceed toward its target. Seeing the accuracy of the flight path, I reviewed the logistics of dragging a large deer two miles to the road at the edge of woods, and I anticipated what it would feel like to sit next to the deer at the side of the road waiting for my ride back into town. The arrow continued on course and the deer had neither heard the sound of the arrow released from the string, nor sensed my presence as he stood at the bottom of the hill along side the creek seeking the smells of the previous three deer. The arrow had traveled most of the distance between the deer and me, when I observed the musculature of his neck lift his heavily antlered head to catch the scent of the doe that had previously played at that spot in the creek. With the thought of the arrow penetrating the flesh of this beautiful animal, a tremendous sense of remorse came over me, and I felt the coldness of the frozen ground beneath me. The arrow was within several feet of its intended target, when my life and that of the deer changed direction along with the flight of the arrow. The arrow hit a small willow stick causing the arrow to veer slightly off course. As I watched the arrow shave off several hairs from the shoulder of the deer, the animal looked at the willow stick wondering about the source of the sound of wood hitting wood. With this turn of his head, his large brown eyes blinked and his lashes stroked the steamy air around his head. His eyes widened as he saw me standing in front of that small pine. He paused for what seemed like hours, but it wasn’t even long enough for me to think about taking another arrow from my quiver. In this split second, I saw his realization of the threat I posed, and I felt from him a strange sense that seemed like shame. White tail deer are a majestic and keenly aware species, and it seemed as though he felt that had betrayed his species by letting his guard down. He quickly regained his instincts, leapt across the stream and ran to the crest of the little ravine. He stopped at the crest and looked across the creek giving me one last glance—as he stood there, the memories of the last few moments, and the lessons learned, were being etched onto his brain and mine.
In geological terms each of us has less time on this planet than an arrow’s time-of-flight—the few seconds of travel time for that arrow serve as a constant reminder for me to live each second with the same fullness that I experienced during that one arrow’s time-of-flight. Open your eyes, feel the environment, sense the wonder, contemplate the universe and experience the world with the absolute fullness of each moment. Imagine a life in which every moment is experienced with same density of awareness as contained in that one arrow’s time-of-flight.
