HOW TO WALK A WIRE

Or learning to walk on one foot. Our brain got used to walking on two feet, with one foot always feeling for a solid place to stand on to balance the other foot that is walking. When it can not find a solid place it panic's and you fall. The brain is simply fooled into thinking you must use both feet to walk, so when you do not use both feel, like trying to stand on one foot, it gets confused, and it panic's causing you to find a solid place for your other foot or causing you to reach out to grab something to keep from falling. An Example: When you set in a swing and get twisted around and then spin around real fast and get off that swing, you cannot balance yourself because the brain is confused by the motion of that swing and thinks you are still spinning. Sailors on a ship get used to having to walk on a platform moving up and down and side to side, so when they get back to shore there brain still thinks it is on a ship and sailors have problems walking on land. Once the brain is able to adjust, they can then walk on land just fine and before long they can walk on a ship and land without worries of falling. So our brain needs security to even walk, and a wire walker gives it the security it needs, by giving it something to hold onto and teaching the brain that it does not need the other foot to stand or walk. The balancing pole it one of the tricks they use to teach the brain. As a little boy I used a TV antenna pole because it was nice and long. You hands then have something to hold onto, so your other foot is not so worried about having to find solid ground so fast, and eventually never thinking it needs solid ground. It is like a monkey. It walks with its tail in the air and grew up this way so they don't need all four feet on the ground to walk, the tail is there balancing pole. I learned by just standing on one foot on a wire holding the balancing pole thinking about nothing except letting the pole do all the work. Now I mean with the pole in the air, not one the ground. The way to hold the pole is with both hands under the pole spread apart far enough so you feel comfortable, then Just let the pole do all the work for you. Your brain will tell your hands where to move the pole without out your input. Just like it tells you where to put your feet when you are walking. After you get used to standing on one foot change feet and stand on the other and keep doing this every day to build up strength in your legs, because, remember you are walking on only one foot, not two feet. Once you get this down pat you will be walking and like a riding a bike it is easier when you are moving, The trick is to be able to stand or even set without any problems and soon walk without a pole. Though you will most likely use a prop most often that acts like a balancing pole. Like something heavy in each hand like weights for balance. Some use umbrellas and other things just like the monkey uses his tail.

MONKEYS IN THE TREE

This summer I spent time picking on my grand children, because there was not much I could do until I get my pacemaker put in. Anyway my granddaughter, who is five and has brittle bone disease was my first target, because she has a good sense of humor and because we enjoy telling tall tails to each other. I acted like I was looking at something in the tree, and she ask what I was looking at. I said "A monkey." So I spent the day trying to show her the monkey in that tree and two more came into the story. I was on a roll! the next few days was spent with her standing in back of my chair with me pointing to the monkeys and her trying to see them. By now we had named all three monkeys; George, Pinkey, and Pepper. She never did find those monkeys and I thought she had forgotten about them. Then today her parents got a letter from the school telling her where she would be setting when she went back to school. they sent this picture of a monkey for her to color and bring to school, and when she got to school she was to look for her seat. It would have a monkey on it. She goes "oh no, I'm blind." Her dad ask what she was talking about and she said, "I still haven't seen those monkeys in the tree dad. " My son knew right away Grandpa was involved.

The Great Blondin

We all have hero's, even an old man like me. As a child my hero was the great Blondin, a high wire walker. I learned all about him and with the help of my brothers and sisters, we found a long pole to use for balance and I got up on a fence post and my sister handed me the pole and I fell of that barb wire fence many times before I got the hang of it. When I got good I did tricks for my sisters and brothers. But walking on the fence loosened the wire and when my dad caught us, it all ended... On the fence. So we chose my moms cloths line. I climbed up the post on one side and my sister handed me my balancing pole and off I went. It was kinda scary at first because it was a lot higher then the fence. But I got control of myself and it was so nice and springy, so I started going up and down like on a trampoline as I walked along. then twang, it snapped, and I went down, down and that was the first time I had gotten the wind knocked out of me and I couldn't breath and thought I was going to die. Then I here my sister yelling Russey mom, and she and all my support was gone. I got more then my breath back and never walked on my moms cloths line again. Not long after we found this old cable and dragged it home. We lived next to a dredge ditch, and we got it tied to a tree on each side of it with wires and I put on shows from then on for my loyal best friends, my brothers and sisters. My dad never found that cable, and I enjoyed many more time breathless with the wind knocked out of me.

Rope Riding

Faded memories come to life when you see thing like the things you once did, and after seeing the girl climbing that rope again, I was reminded of several things I did as a child, that I had forgotten about. One of those things was like something those girls did a few years ago. stand on a table like thing and standing in the swing and jumping off. I grew up as the oldest of seven children, and the things we did then would be considered suicidal today. because of the radically paranoid pansy society we live in today. Anyway we grew up on a dairy farm in Northern Minnesota, and our barn was a high round top roof, with a lean too on each side. One side was for our horses and the other side was for the cows. The middle with the high round roof was open from the roof to the ground, except for a small partition in front that we used as a pump house. This area from the roof to the ground and roof to the top of the pump house was for storing hay. There was a long steal rail at the peek that run from the front to the back. On this rail was a pulley type thing on wheels, that looked like a toy upside down tractor. a rope went around that pulley with one end of the rope going to a pulley at the end of the rail on down to a pulley at the bottom of the building that was hooked to the horses, so they could pull on it. The rope went under another pulley with a thing that had long forks on it and looked like a big mouth that opened and shut. The whole thing when pulled up to the track moved or was pulled out by another rope and lowered unto a wagon loaded with hay, and the forks were opened and shoved into the hay on the wagon and closed full of hay as the horses pulled on the other end of the rope, it was pulled up. when it got to the top it went into the building and was opened inside the building where the hay fell to the ground. When the haymow was full of hay the big forks were taken off leaving the rope on one pull hanging down. in the spring when the hay was gone, we would pull the pully and rope to how high we wanted it and tie it off. Then we would take the pulley end of the rope up to the top of the loft over the pump-house, stand on the pulley and leep off and swing to the other side of the barn and kick off that wall and swing back, over and over again. I can still here my sister yelling my turn Russey, my turn.

SEEING

Ever set on a park bench or lawn chair trying to watch everything going on around you, like the mama bird with her chicks, resting on the ground right at your feet, as though you were a best friend they didn't have to fear. Then she flies away, with her babies taking flight behind her, then as she lands on the roof of a shop, followed by one of her chicks, the other baby loses control and slams into the window of the shop, rolls over and flapping its wings in panic, uprights itself, gains control and flies off, as though it had no worry or care about who saw it blunder in flight.
Then a girl on a long rope swing, tied to a branch of a tree, so high it gives you shivers to think of being up there, starts climbing up the rope. She moves slowly, as though she is planning each moves she make as she goes up, up, up, and she touches the tree branch, as you feel a falling kind of dizziness, as you set in ah at what she had just done, and feeling the joyful pride and the fear sets in with a pain going down your back, because you were in her place on a rope just like that many times when you were her age.
As we get older we live through what we see, and here. And we are and always will be that little boy or girl, deep inside, even though our body is much older, the spirit will always be young. So we set on the old park bench or lawn chair and enjoy the wonders around us as though we were a part of that wonder and yes, when it comes to children and adventure, we were once.