Austria 5/28: Archery

Late in the morning, Dad dropped some of us off at an archery range close to our house. It was the off-season, so the archery range’s small shed was unattended. We knocked on the door of the companion restaurant (everything in Austria comes with a companion restaurant) and the gracious owner soon appeared to show us what we needed. 

We each borrowed a wooden bow, a leather arm guard, and four arrows. We proved ourselves by shooting at practice targets, and the owner set us loose on the range. 

We split into three groups: Peter and Nick went first with Rob and T. Rex to make sure they both had help. Sam and I went second. Mom, Uncle Reagan, and Monga were the last group. They were better than all of us, even though Monga had just learned. We’d all forgotten Mom used to be a camp counselor. 

The archery range ran along the side of a mountain. There were 28 stations total, spread out in a large loop. We shot at sturdy foam animal targets, climbed through to retrieve our arrows, then continued along the path until we came to the next set of targets. 

The forest was beautiful and very wet. It reminded me a lot of the forests back in East Tennessee. After we’d spent a while on the course, we realized the hike was more difficult than the archery challenges were. Except for the thin paths and foam targets, the forest was largely untouched. Soil was loose and rocky, and the path was steep. 

I didn’t get to see the other groups shoot their arrows, but I had a great time with Sam. Here he is with one of his bullseye shots. 

Sam was a little forest arrow-spirit. Every time he walked behind a target to collect our stray arrows, all the arrows of days past would abandon their hiding places and appear right in front of Sam’s feet. I kept hearing the phrase “Oh hey, look at this cool arrow I found.” 

At one point, I lost a thin metal arrowhead. A wayward arrow hit the soil and when we took it out, the tip was missing. Sam and I decided to dig for it so we could fit it back onto the shaft. The arrow had been shallow, and the soil was loose. We pushed our fingers into the mossy turf, turned over a half-inch of soil, and gaped. There, where we’d hoped to see our arrowhead, sat the greenest earthworm we had ever seen in our lives. We set it on top of the nearby foam deer to take some pictures. 

When we’d shot at about 20 stations, we decided to walk the rest of the course. We’d had a VERY good time and were amazed at how many stations there were. 

The youngest two were completely worn out by the time we turned in our gear, so most of our party remained at the restaurant. Sam, Peter, Uncle Reagan and I set off to fetch Dad and the van. We took a paved sidewalk that ran along the river all the way back to our rental house. We did not meander. 

There were lots of slugs along the path: long black ones that stayed close to the edges of the concrete. When we were quite close to our house, Sam and I looked down and noticed the biggest slug we had ever seen. The king of all slugs. It was about five inches long and one inch thick. We stopped in our tracks and looked at it with amazement and horror. Peter was approaching from behind, so we called to him to come check it out. He looked down without changing pace. With one square step, he brought the king of all slugs to an end. 

Thus ends my account of the day. We reached the house in good time and Dad drove to the range and brought back the rest of our group.