I think of thunderstorms a lot when I shoot.
Once when I was little, I got stuck outside during a particularly bad lightning storm, and ever since I carry a lasting, panicked fear of storms. It was my first deep fear I could remember, and I always hated it. Not so much the fear itself, but the way it made me act, what it took from me when it overcame me.
Where I grew up, powerful summer storms and power outages were regular occurrences, and once as I sat in my house in the dark, a seven year old scared of a storm, I came up with an idea.
I went outside and sat through the storm till it passed. I sat and felt the fear, explored the way it crackled through me and then dissipated into a warm summer evening, the air alive and heavy and calm again.
Heights were a crippling fear of mine, so when I was old enough I took up rock climbing, and learned to move gracefully through fear; I became an ice climber, illegally climbing frozen waterfalls at night, shaking off several big near misses to climb again. I was afraid of the dark, so in the winter I went out into the woods alone, with nothing but a tarp and a sleeping bag and pad; I climbed mountains in the Adirondacks deep winter to feel the deepest loneliness I could. I was always afraid of open water, so I took up distance paddling, and fought storms and waves and cold. Eventually I taught these things, helped others navigate through them.
And here's the thing: I'm still terrified of all those things. Deeply. But I know I can master the fear, work through it; its presence is irrelevant in the face of persistence.
But one thing has hung with me still: performance anxiety. Ever since I was four, I loved nothing more than drumming. I would practice for hours every single day, often my fingers taped up from being worn through. I was one of the most accomplished drummers in our state for my age, but in every concert, I would at some point freeze, always at the most complicated part of the piece, the one I'd sunk entire months into practicing. And every time I performed those months of work would come undone in a halting moment.
And I never got to beat it; eventually it became clear that no matter how skilled a drummer I was in a practice room, this collapse under pressure would return over and over again, almost getting worse each time.
My fear beat me. I moved on. I found other passions, and as a period of depression or powerlessness would overcome me, I'd find another fear and play with it to find a sense of purpose again. But still, stage fright was there always.
When I first picked up a bow a few years ago, I took to it in a way I haven't felt about anything except drumming. Entire days would pass by happily spent in my yard shooting arrow after arrow; I felt a pleasurable exhaustion and pain in my muscles that I hadn't felt since I drummed.
When I found a club to shoot with, it was clear my time spent practicing had paid off, and the coach asked me if I wanted to shoot a scoring round with the club one day. I flat out refused, saying I never would. I knew what would happen. As I stepped outside the range, I could hear everyone preparing inside, and I felt a wave of relief that I'd escaped.
And then, I felt a storm of emotions move over me like heavy summer clouds. I remembered dangling by my fingertips off cliffs, dodging falling ice, being crushed under waves, a long night alone on a mountain facing off against a bear. I remembered all of that dwarfed by the sudden, overpowering awkwardness of my hands as I tried to drum under a spotlight.
I went back inside, just before the shoot started. "I'll do it."
This has been my battle ever since with archery, almost every minute dedicated to finally tackling this one fear. The man today is the same boy, fighting the same battle over and over. And here's the truth: it's beaten me every time. Maybe every archer says this, but it's true: I know I'm good. I have the data, I have the experience, I know I can do it. Others know I can do it. But right now, I still haven't beaten it when it's for real. As I write this, I'm coming off the line having fallen far short of what I know I can do. I feel all the familiar feelings I felt as a young drummer, confused by what happened.
But intertwined through it all, the disappointment, the exhaustion, the anger, is just one thought I can't shake: "How lucky am I?"
And it's only now I realize that my fear, when I turn into it, has given me so much in my life. Sunsets from cliff tops; the delicate dance of water and ice and gravity; the silent awe of morning alpinglow; the soft curl of fog broken by the piercing loon's cry; the smell of warm summer nights after a storm. Everything good in my life, everything that's made me who I am, has come from my fear.
And as I meet it again now, arrow after arrow, I think of the friends I've made, the mentors who've guided me, the matches I've seen, and the focus it's given me every single day since I turned and stepped back on that line.
And as I write this, tired, exhausted, embarrassed, one feeling overpowers them all. Joy: the joy of getting to do it all again.
That golden moment you came back inside to score?
The rest....is, as they say, history. Rock on.