So, As the title says, what started your journey? Ill start with mine.
As a boy, I was like most others my age; I loved the Indians, thinking it would be so very exciting to be like them. Time and time again I would "build" a bow. What I was really doing was not bow-making, but it sufficed for my interests. Patrick, a good friend of mine, would make these bows with me. The one time I had made a decent shooting bow Patrick and I wandered around the yard, terrors of the neighborhood. My sister and her friend, who happened to be Patrick's sister, where out in the yard, "Shoot near them." Patrick says, and doing just that, I shot, hit his sister's eyelid, and got in big trouble. In consequence the bow was snapped in half by my dad, and that was the end of a "good" bow. The rest of my childhood seemed to involve bows at some point or another. When we moved I had found another stick that seemed like a good choice for a bow, and, for a while it held up.
That's just part of it. I just recently was able to find a story that i had forgotten about until now. Sign of the Beaver. I am going to buy it again, but i have to say, it was an AMAZING book, great read and well worth my time. Its about a boy whose left at a cabin while his father goes to fetch his mother and sister and leaves him there. He is barely making it, up until the natives help him out. He learns to make a bow and arrows, he learns to navigate well through the forests, he learns to hunt, and be self sufficient. One of my all time favorites for primitive fiction.
What is your story? why did you start?
Before i forget. I was like 8 or so when i shot his sister, bad deal, didnt intend to shoot her in the eye. Shes got perfect vision even today. The eyelid was the part that got the impact and it was on the bone.