Saturday, November 28, 1998
Mental Focus and Practice Conquer Fears, Perfect Skills
Yosemite Slack Lining |
For decades, rock climbers eager to improve their technique have practiced walking across just about anything they could get their feet on. They'd try chains; they'd try cables.
Dean Potter began slack lining six years ago in Joshua Tree. He rock climbed so much that his fingers were raw and painful. A friend told him about rope walking and introduced him to a laid-back blue-eyed hippie 21 years his senior: Chongo.
The two quickly became friends. Potter was able to stand on the slack rope on his first try. Soon he could walk low lines, 8 to 10 feet off the ground, with no tether. He could turn, walk with his hands behind his back, walk backward, or make the line bounce.
Potter's climbing colleagues couldn't help but wonder: Was it loose rope walking that honed his climbing, affording him uncanny balance?
The challenge, slackers say, is the mental concentration, staying relaxed and focused as you methodically pad across a gulf, wrestling with panic. It is not the short burst of anxiety a bungee jumper or skydiver faces before leaping, but a deliberate dialogue with fear. The best slackers are able to suppress their emotion and "Zen out."
One morning, Potter and Chongo strung up a yellow line eight feet above the ground in a grove of tall pines and oaks. It was about 60 feet long, like the Lost Arrow walk.
Once the ropes were placed higher, Potter's heart beat faster. His balance was more precarious.
"You are walking on exactly the same thing but it changes, it makes you scared," he said. "My goal is to walk the same high as I do low to the ground--to be able to control my emotions. I want to feel comfortable enough to walk unprotected"--without a tether.
He and Chongo tinkered with the rope, tuning it taunt like a violin string. In a blink, Potter leaped barefoot atop the rope and breathed deeply. As he stepped forward, the line wiggled and wobbled. Potter pinned his eyes to the tree ahead of him. Then he lost his balance and jumped off.
"I haven't relaxed yet," he said with a sigh.
Chongo climbed on, his purple and white sneakers slapping the rope. "Whoa," he called out as it dipped.
Chongo's fear depressed him. He worried that he would always feel haunted by this failure. Then he set himself to perfecting his skills. He started looking at the rope like it was a swaying needle and tried to keep it pointing plumb. He worked on mounting more smoothly, putting his right foot atop the rope, grabbing the line with his left hand, pulling his body up in a crouch. As soon as he brought his left foot onto the line, his arms would shoot out for balance. Then he'd take two steps, trying to keep his body relaxed. It felt like surfing, only more difficult.
Chongo and Potter alternated walking atop the practice rope. With each turn, Potter's face increasingly lost tension.
"Maybe the first couple of seconds, you are thinking in words, then quickly you need to snap out and just think of balancing and breathing," he said. "You quiet your mind."