Smack My Controversy column Back in the day, the archer was alone with his bow (it was an intimate relationship) between the man and his tool, the same sheer connection bound him to his quiver of arrows and the importance…...
You never forget the first book that cuts you. The one that leaves a wound, not in flesh, but in the quiet, unguarded place where thoughts sleep before they wake to meaning. Mine was a battered volume on the The…...
Stories are not told. They are loosed, like arrows from a drawn bow, their fletching kissed by breath, their paths uncertain yet inevitable. A storyteller does not own the tale—he only pulls the string, lets it fly, watches it carve…
Have you heard of a madness that does not burn with fire but seeps like a disease, making bones feverish and bending the mind to its will? It does not speak, it does not sing, it does not threaten, but…
The first thing they saw was the light. It came from the sea, from beyond the edges of the world they had known, a gleam upon the water like the sun’s fractured reflection. Then the ships, too vast to be…
The fog drapes itself over the city like an old habit, curling around the silent bones of forgotten histories. The Green Archer (1961) lurks in my mind much the same way—a shadow flickering in the recesses of memory, half-formed yet…...
You think you understand violence. You think you’ve seen it, measured it, weighed it in your hands like something you could master, something that bends to the will of the wielder. You think a weapon is just a tool. But…
I first stumbled upon Irish Celtic mythology when I was a lad of fourteen, a scrawny thing with a wild imagination and a stubborn curiosity for the unknown. It was my older sister who planted the seed, gifting me a…...
The trade was small, insignificant in the grand scheme of things. A childhood barter, some scrap of possession given away for something else, though the details are long since swallowed by the tides of memory. I don’t remember what I…
“The king, his heart resolute, called upon his knights, ‘Where is my son, Charles?’ They replied, ‘Sire, we know not; we believe he fights on.’ Then he declared, ‘Loyal companions, lead me into the fray, that I may strike but…...
The wind shifted. That peculiar scent of damp earth, wood smoke, and the first stirrings of green rising from winter’s quiet breath. The hedgerows outside my window whispered of coming rain, the kind that soaks slow and steady, not in…...
The story arrived as many others do, cloaked in the smoky haze of memory and the eccentric cadence of a teller who half-believes the story they’re telling. Dim, my father’s driver, was the one who first mentioned Hachiman. I could…...
Good day, Nick, and welcome to our new interview series, The Archer’s Mark, which will be published every month in print and online. First off, thanks for taking the time to chat. I have to admit, once I got started…...
IFAF Indoor National championship 2025 Saturday morning, and the gods had decided to be kind. No rain, no howling winds, just an uncharacteristically mild February air settling over Waterford like a held breath. Eight degrees Celsius, but let’s leave Anders…
A bow is born long before the first curl of wood makes its way to the ground before the rasp makes the first bite into the grain or the sinew begins to hum against the frame that is slowly taking shape.…
“The bow whispers to the archer: trust the wind, trust the arrow, trust yourself.” There’s a certain quiet to the past, a hush that lingers in old things—tools, stories, hands that remember what the world once was. Some things don’t…
A film review of frontier brutality, archery, and the quiet horror of survival. There’s something primal about the way American Primeval treats archery—something that strips it of romance, of the quiet elegance we might have once attributed to it in…
There’s a curious thing about homecomings. They aren’t quite what we imagine them to be, are they? A man sets out, faces the tempests of the world, and dreams of the day he will step across the threshold of home,…
Aiming for Connection Archery isn’t just a sport or a skill—it’s an invitation to step into a world that challenges and rewards in equal measure. It prompts precision, patience, and self-awareness, and it always gives something more in return. Whether you…