Patience

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I've cheated, a little, let Grey go to work on this project. He did in two hours what would take me two weeks. But for the most part, the eight hundred hours of rasping and draw-knife work it takes to take an Osage Orange stave down to a bow have been mine. I exaggerate. Slightly.

I'm approaching the end, now--both of the bow, and of this class. At Skills Night on Thursday I spend most of two hours turning 15 pieces of Dacron into a bow string. I need to bend the bow, figure out where I have to reduce certain segments of it just a little bit. Scrape or sand those places. Negotiate with Grey about whether I need to do more rasping (Answer: No). Cut in an arrow rest, if I can, so I don't bleed all over the wood. But the bow looks done to my amateur eye; it looks like I could string it and fire it right now. The work that remains is subtle, particular, patient. Every part of the process of creation has taxed me, but this last bit looks like it will cost me the most. Patience isn't really my jam.

Photo taken by Cameron MacPhail at Eel Creek earlier this year.

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Cycles

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We discuss why I think the bird might have been startled. We consider the behavior of other birds we have seen that morning; how they pop up from the ground and land on a tree limb above us, but do not flee before us as we walk. They are used to people in this area. They do not seem scared of us, just cautious.  I mention that my interpretation has much of myself in it. This is new; this kind of tracking is deep. Much deeper than counting toes and looking for claw marks. Much has changed since September.

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Walk On

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We've spent the day burrowing into a snowbank, four little rabbit warrens against the bulk of Mount Hood. We piled up the snow all day, tamping it down with our snowshoes, with ourselves--flinging our whole bodies on top of the mounds to compress and sinter the snow. We dug into our mounds, excavating the snow inside and piling it on top, then built shelves along the sides and covered those in fir boughs.  We have little shelves for our candles, air holes, a wall to block the entrance from wind, the works. We have only one casualty--a broken shovel. I hang up my snow-encrusted wool poncho to block the door entrance. Testing out our little hidey hole in the afternoon, still warm from the exertion of construction, it seems stable enough, and almost cozy. My partner crawls inside and disappears for twenty minutes, recovering from the expenditure of building the thing.

Photo taken by Reverend Blue Sky.

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Grief

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Everyone else has tripped off to a little patch of woods somewhere, bow drill kit in hand, to find a place they want to be in for a solo overnight under a tarp shelter. Grey, after our feedback last week, has decided that he needs to create the need for us to learn bow drill. This skill was introduced early on, but only one student has repeated the magic trick more than once and gone from coal to fire. I myself have trouble making smoke, let alone a coal. Hence, a solo day and a night where we tend a fire through that 24 hour period. And not eat, apparently.

Photo taken by Morgan Spalding on a personal snowboarding trip to Mt Hood.

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