more on sport

From a comment on another blog:

Just in from a day huckleberry picking on the local mountainside. I t occurs to me that, for myself, gathering wild berries is not substantially different from hunting deer. i would class neither as a sport, but rather an attempt to step outside the "wage-earner" cycle, and however briefly, deal directly with the local environment to gather/take/harvest a portion of my food needs.

I read an interesting take on sport in a book about sea kayaking years ago. The author (George Dyson) was discussing the value of sport (in this case kayak racing), as an artificial means of creating the intensity of effort that might come naturally in a hunter/gatherer society. We trick our minds into thinking that it is REALLY IMPORTANT to paddle faster than the other guys in their boats. For myself, hunting is not an abstraction, designed to induce the inner sportsman to push himself to the limits. If anything it is the opposite, an inducement to slow down and really take in my surroundings with all my senses.

The last sentence is interesting, implies all sport is aggressive and designed to "push to the limits." The ideas of zen and the art of archery--or zen handgunning--appear to be completely foreign here, the idea that sport can be "an inducement to slow down and really take in my surroundings with all my senses" basically absent. Forget sailing also I guess.