Saturday, November 28, 1998
Slack Liners Conquer Fear, Achieve Peace
Yosemite Slack Lining |
Scott Balcom was plagued with doubt. Unlike his friends, he had responsibilities: a wife, a child, a job as a carpenter, a house in Arizona. He worried about his then--5-year-old son, Adom. If something happened, Adom would never know him. This, he vowed, would be the last time he walked Lost Arrow. At least until his son was older.
It struck him that slack lining was symbolic of life: The rope was straight and unmoving until you got on, then it swung--forcing you to ride the curves as you traveled to your destination. Thirteen years after Balcom's first Lost Arrow walk, Dean Potter yearned to try it. He had heard tales about how Balcom had tried and tried until he finally crossed. He would hear how Balcom returned on the 10-year anniversary of his walk and had done it again. Now it was Potter's quest.
"You are really fully alert to everything--you are super alive," said Potter. "You conquer your fear, you walk again and again, and the fear is gone. That's a great feeling. You get addicted to the feeling."
He would slack line when he felt troubled, and his problems melted, leaving him feeling centered. Or he would walk as a friend played his guitar. Sometimes he would be joined by a number of buddies mulling over the vagaries of life, and slack lining would give way to partying.
Potter's mother, silver-haired Patricia Dellert, part Skaticook Indian, likes to tell a story about when her son was 5 years old and the family lived in an Arab village in occupied Jordan, where Dean's father was stationed with the U.S. Army. A tall stone wall surrounded their home. One day, Dean fell on his head after trying to climb the wall. Muslim women chanted and threw salt in hopes of purging evil spirits and making the boy well.
"Whatever they did, it worked--though I don't know, maybe it's why he is the way he is," said Dellert. She is clearly proud of her youngest child's accomplishments. A practitioner of yoga, she tries to view his slack lining as another means of reaching a meditative state--a more comforting way to consider the notion of her boy walking a rope across a precipice.