Combustion Junkies

I remember the first time I ever fired a gun.  It was hot, probably somewhere in the middle of July and my friend offered to take me shooting.  We stopped by his house and picked up his Springfield XD-M .40 and went on a little drive to some extremely isolated little region of the world where you could tell other people had also gone for target practice.  I was such a noob that it felt like the first day I threw a leg over a bike. We got out of the car and I glanced out over a barren landscape at some dust devils that were racing over the fields off in the distance.  It was like the scene out of a western.  I felt a little bit like what Clint Eastwood must have felt like as I squinted and brushed the hair away from whipping my face. The sun was lingering overhead and I could feel it instantly searing the back of my neck.  He popped the trunk and pulled out some ear protection. I was grinning but on the inside I was nervous. 

Out of loose tins and bottles that were laying around, he made up some makeshift targets, propping them on random pieces of wood and broken furniture. Behind it was a large dirt hill that cast just the right amount of shadow. He gave me some pointers and put the gun in my hand. It was heavy and hot and at that moment it became real to me. I laugh when I am nervous and I let out several giggles, a few chants of, "I don't know about this." And finally I had settled into a moment where I finally pulled it all together. As I raised the gun toward the target, my ear protection cancelling out everything but a subtle hum of wind, time seemed to slow and I felt my palms instantly sweating against the polymer grip. I remember thinking that if I didn't make my decision soon it was going to slide out of my hand. I took a breath, exhaled and focused my sights. At that moment the vast landscape around me had become an orange/tan blur. When it finally fired after that lingering suspenseful moment where I could hear nothing over the sound of my own heart in my chest. I was elated. Combustion; one powerful pulse of energy that propelled a single object with such intent that I simply couldn't stop smiling at the sheer genius of the engineering behind it. I felt the force of the recoil push back against me, startling me but as I held onto it and felt the energy resonate and dissipate through my body, I thought: "Holy hawt dayum... that's a lot of power!"  

"Crap... she's reloading."

Fast forward a couple of years and I've spent a lot more time over the last few months shooting other people's guns, learning, questioning, doing research, shooting some more and simply falling in love with shooting.  There are these things in life that may not have been introduced to us as kids, but that we find later on and become enamored with.  As my friend (the same friend who took me shooting on that fateful day), drove me back to my house after I had officially laid the money down and signed the paperwork on my first handgun this weekend, he asked me: "Did you ever think that would own a gun?"  Without hesitation I grinned, "Well no, but to be fair, I never saw myself riding a motorcycle either... when I was a kid I envisioned myself as a writer living in a neat little loft in New York City." Sometimes, in life, we don't get to choose where our path goes (whether we follow the rules or not) but we do get to choose how to make the most of it and sometimes we have to challenge ourselves to step outside of the mold, to pop the bubble and try something new. 

I can't put words to how innately I am moved by the power of the combustion process; whether I am holding it in my hand and squeezing a trigger, reeling back the throttle and leaning into the corners, or pressing the but of a shotgun up against my shoulder and trying to nail a clay disc that is sailing through the air. Life manifests itself in many ways, and it all starts with a spark that we have to lend ourselves to igniting... even if we've grown accustomed to living in the dark.