I was practicing with my new bow at Wirth Park's* archery range when a large pickup pulled up and a very tall man got out (taller than me and that's tall). Short-cropped hair, camo jacket and wrap-around sunglasses -- all signs of someone with a conservative bent. He hauled a big black case to the picnic table and unpacked what to my eyes looked like a contraption -- a high-tech compound bow. It was late September and he was likely there to tune up for the deer hunting season. I said hi, he nodded and I continued shooting.
Only a few weeks earlier, out of curiosity, I had purchased a primitive recurve bow known generally as a horse bow. The style originates from the bows used by horse nomads of the Eurasian steppe -- Turks, Mongols, Huns, Alans, and back through time to the original horse nomads: Scythians.* I was writing and researching a novel that involved Scythians and I wanted to get an idea of what it was like to shoot one of their bows.
The bows were called "composite" because they were made with a combination of wood, bone, horn and sinew. The limbs for my bow were made of fiberglass but, by all accounts, the shooting characteristics were similar to the ancient bows. I found it a challenge to shoot. There's no ledge to rest the arrow on so you have to use your hand, and there's nothing to aim with so you have to shoot instinctively. My early efforts were awful but I was starting to get the hang of it. No one was going to confuse me with Robin Hood but at least I was hitting the hay bale.
The tall man attached a couple of things to his bow and made adjustments with a screwdriver. He set up his own target 40 yards away and began to shoot. Instead of pulling the string back with his fingers, he used a triggering device designed to provide crisp, consistent releases. This is standard for compound bows.
A compound bow uses a system of pulleys and cables to change the nature of the draw. With a traditional bow, the further you pull back the heavier the draw. A compound bow's draw is the opposite, heavy at the beginning but light at the back. This allows people to shoot stronger bows and reduces fatigue.
The tall man's initial groups were tight and became even tighter after he got his sight zeroed in. I started to feel a little silly as I worked to keep my arrows within a two-foot circle at 25 yards. But I kept at it -- breath from the stomach, focus on the target, draw, pause, release. Between volleys he watched me with, I assumed, some amusement mixed with derision. I finished my volley and we both walked to our targets to retrieve the arrows.
"What kind of bow is that?" The tall man asked.
I explained and handed him the bow to look at.
"Jesus, it's so light," he said. "Damn, that's a cool bow."
"Not quite as accurate as yours," I said.
"No, but you make me feel like I'm cheating," he said.
We went on to have a good conversation about bows and hunting and other stuff. He pointed out, correctly, that the arrows I was using weren't stiff enough. Later I bought stiffer arrows and my accuracy improved.
~
Technology is seductive and the compound bow is a good case in point. The time and effort needed to shoot accurately with a primitive bow is considerable. With a compound bow, even a relative beginner can become reasonably accurate in a short time. The modern compound bow is about reducing human elements to a minimum in favor of mechanical precision. It's a marvel of ingenuity.
But something is lost in the experience. Shooting a primitive bow has a way of opening the mind because you're forced to use more of it and use parts that reside below the level of consciousness.
In thinking about this kind of thing, I've come to believe that whenever technology replaces a skill, it represents a diminishment. The threat is that as technology advances, the human animal grows less capable and ever more dependent.
I don't want to dis technology and be a crotchety Luddite. The question is how do you distinguish good tech from bad? The electric guitar, I would argue, is good tech because it opens up a world of musical possibility that otherwise wouldn't exist, yet it doesn't replace guitar-playing skill. But that's a clear-cut example. Most technologies are in some measure both enhancing and diminishing (computers, smart phones, the internet, automobiles and so on).
So what do we do? Do we go along for the ride -- let our skills shrink to a handful of vocational specialties (if even those can't be replaced) and move toward becoming little more than entertainment absorption organisms? I don't have an answer. Maybe the marginalization of humanity by technology is a natural and inevitable development. I, for one, intend to resist and keep shooting my horse bow until they pry it from my cold, dead hands.
No comments:
Post a Comment