Homeless on the Range

[ornoth]

Another kyūdō update, because (outside of cycling, which has its own blog) archery seems to be the most eventful facet of life, at least until I pound out a long-overdue summary of the past three-plus years of meditation practice…

There’s three highlights that I’d like to share (or at least record for my own future recollections, which you can listen in on, if you want).

While our archery group usually practices at extremely short distance (2 meters) at our indoor dojo, two weeks ago we held our first regular practice of the year at the long-distance outdoor range run by the Austin Archery Club (AAC).

With Austin Kyūdō at the AAC Range

Unfortunately, it was also our last practice there, because the city has unilaterally terminated the archery club’s lease to that land and evicted them. In the short term, that’s a big kick in the teeth for us at Austin Kyūdō. I’m hopeful it’ll be a temporary setback, since both organizations are actively trying to find alternative spaces to use, but we don’t know whether, how, or when that might work out.

The timing of the closure was odd for me, because I was just about to pay for my own personal membership to AAC. I happen to live very close to the range, and a membership would’ve allowed me to go practice distance shooting pretty much all day any day. So the shutdown saves me the $100 membership fee, plus the cash I was going to spend getting my own kyūdō-specific target to use. But of course I would’ve been happy to spend that money, if only they had been able to stay open.

On Saturday 3/14 a handful of us gathered at the range for that final long-distance practice. It was the first time I’ve shot at the standard 28-meter distance since last September’s trip to a kyūdō seminar in South Carolina, and my first chance to test myself after correcting my technique following two long years of struggling with bad form.

To my complete delight, I shot surprisingly well. I lofted five sets of two arrows, and in four of those sets, my second shot hit the target (a 36 cm circle). I don’t think I’d ever scored more than one hit (in total) in any session, so four hits and a 40% success rate was deeply encouraging, especially considering the state of my poor, abused arrow fletchings. After being so bad for so long, finally having things click felt incredibly good.

That was reinforced by a side conversation I had with our club’s manager, who told me she thought I was the equivalent of a 2nd-Dan kyudoka. I’m current unranked – and vociferously disinterested in kyudo’s hierarchy of ranks and formal testing – but it’s still useful to know how others assess my proficiency. And knowing that I would likely pass the written test and skill demonstrations for 1st- and 2nd-Dan is another very encouraging vote of confidence.

Although to be honest, the tests for those first two ranks are pretty cursory. The written questions are rudimentary and you’re not expected to hit the target at all until the exam for 3rd-Dan. And it’s good to know that given a little more practice, I could probably put in a creditable showing in the 3rd-Dan test… if I cared about such things at all.

So I’m happy to have had another very encouraging session, even if long-distance practice is now out of the question for the time being.