Part of my personal healing process is giving myself a chance to expand beyond the interests I have to embrace interests I’ve never tried before.
Ever since I first felt the end of my marriage coming closer, I’ve had a desire to try and be more independent, learn and do things that some people wouldn’t think I’d be interested in. Some of those things I’ve written about before, like long distance hiking and learning how to fish. Not only are these things essential to survival in the coming ecological breakdown (cause let’s be real, we’ve got maybe 50 or so years left before utter ecological catastrophe), but fishing and even hunting usually are more sustainable than buying meat from the store, unless you’re buying local, which is often not the case. It’s also more humane to hunt and fish for your own meat. The animal has lived in its natural habitat, has likely contributed offspring to the local wildlife population, and doesn’t require a gigantic carbon footprint to grow, slaughter, and ship. I’m not entirely sure if I actually have it in me to kill an animal, but I think I’d like to give myself the opportunity to try.
Yesterday, I had my first lesson in how to sharpen knives. My father has huge chunks of information that were passed down from his father and grandfather on knife sharpening, how to treat and use leather to make things, among many others, and since I’m the primary cook in my household, I wanted to know how to sharpen my cooking knives. So my dad and I sat for about an hour or so and worked on sharpening one of his problematic knives. (I also want to start carrying a knife on me, and I figured this would be a great opportunity to get used to being around them, handling them, and maintaining them.) It was surprisingly relaxing. My dad, being the big softy that he is, actually bought me a knife sharpening kit (it’s a really great kit, too) and he gave me some really great pieces of information for starting out.
As we talked, I mentioned that I was interested in learning archery. His eyes lit up in ways I haven’t seen in a long time. He used to have a bow and, to my surprise, knew a lot about archery. He started asking me questions about what kind of bow I was interested in and told me a lot about the different ways of using a bow, including the weight of the pull, etc. In the course of this conversation, we decided to start doing some archery together. There’s actually an archery store relatively close to us both that we’re going to start frequenting so that I can learn more about archery, find a bow I like, buy it, and start practicing. He said that he would buy a bow and join me if I was really interested, and I genuinely am.
Then, because our conversations are very fluid and jump around to a lot of different topics, I also mentioned I was interested in learning blacksmithing. This is more of a passing interest because I’m not sure it’s realistic for me to actually gain experience in that where I live, but it is something I think would be really fun and interesting to learn. Making my own knives, while time consuming, would be really awesome. It could make me quite a bit of money too, if I got good enough at it. This topic came up because I mentioned I want to learn to make my own bow and my own arrows. Again, my focus here is ways of being as independent as I can. I might learn how to hunt with a bow, though I think that would be a bit farther down the line.
Anyway, it’s fascinating to see all the things that can happen in a Sunday afternoon. In the next week or two, my dad and I are gonna go to the archery store and look at bows, and then after graduation, I’ll be buying my first bow! It’s exciting. There’s always the chance that I decide I’m not into it, but I don’t think that will be the case. I think I’ll enjoy it quite a lot. I might even get into competitions, but I don’t want to rush too far ahead of myself.
Anyway, happy Monday!
