A Morning at the Range
A True North Retreats day at a clay-shooting range: the barn, the stations in the trees, the smoker, and a hall full of men who came to be with one another.
True North Retreats brings men together, away from the office and the phone, to spend a few days in company that asks something of them. This was one of those days: a clay-shooting range out in the country, a green barn, a tent for breakfast, and a few dozen men who mostly did not know one another at eight in the morning. I was there as a member, with a camera.
A shooting station is a quiet place. The man on the stand has his ear defenders on and the world narrows to a wooden frame and a strip of sky. The men behind him go quiet too. Then the clay goes up, and the whole station is watching one person do one thing well, or not.
By noon the smoker was going and the hall had filled. What the camera kept finding was not the shooting. It was two men talking with the guns broken over their arms, the one standing at the back of the hall with his hands behind him, listening, and the group in front of the barn at the end, squinting into the sun, in no hurry to leave.
