Tether

   This past week, a man named Nik Wallenda tight roped across Niagara Falls, the first person to do so directly over the Falls. He is a member of the Flying Wallenda family, one of the most famous families of circus aerialists in history. He dedicated the feat to his great-grandfather, Karl Wallenda, patriarch of the family.
   One of the Flying Wallendas' claims to fame was doing their performances without the benefit of a safety net. This also has been the source of some family tragedy. In 1962, while performing their famous seven person pyramid on a tightrope, one of their bottom members faltered and the whole pyramid fell. Two family members perished and one was paralyzed from the waist down. Then again in 1963, yet another family member fell and died as the result. Sadly, Karl himself passed away in 1978 after falling from a tightrope stretched between two high rises in Puerto Rico. In this way, the Flying Wallenda legacy is fraught with both tremendous physical accomplishment and horrendous personal grief.

The Flying Wallendas' seven-person pyramid

   All of this led to Nik Wallenda's historic walk across the falls.
   When I heard about this proposed walk, I immediately thought of the danger and the family legacy. I mainly thought of the danger. I thought this would surely be a death-defying feat of the highest order. It would actually define death-defying.
   Except death-defying it wasn't. The reason why it wasn't is because ABC, the American T.V. network which sponsored the walk and agreed to telecast it decided it didn't want to necessarily broadcast the possible demise of someone on live T.V. To this end they forced Nik Wallenda to use a tether, a strap that would connect him to the wire and prevent him from falling to his death should he actually lose his balance and not be able to recover during the walk.
   To his credit (I think), Wallenda was totally against using the tether. It certainly flew in the face of family tradition. I imagine it also went against whatever macho nature he has residing in his daredevil's heart. There was talk that he might even begin the walk with the tether on but then remove it when he was actually on the wire, the agreement being that if he felt the tether itself poised a safety threat he then had this option. As it turned out, however, the tether remained on.
   For many people, this changed the whole mystique around the performance. Suddenly, what once seemed like a once in a lifetime not-to-be missed extravaganza was now a non-event. Rather than the death-defiance, what we got was a long, wet stroll.
   There was a huge crowd in Niagara Falls watching Nik Wallenda's walk, possibly a hundred and ten thousand people. Then again, millions more watched the telecast. I didn't myself but, if I had, I would have watched under the assumption that death was being defied. I wonder how many people made the trek to the Falls under the same assumption and, if they had known about the tether, might not have bothered.
   As it turned out, the safety measure was totally unnecessary-- Nik even ran the last few metres. But, in the end, he'd been robbed of much bravado, strapped up as he was. He even admitted to feeling like a "jackass".

Annie Edson Taylor--first person to conquer the Falls

   I suppose that if Wallenda was somehow robbed then possibly the rest of us were, as well. But robbed of what? What exactly caught our imagination in all this? Was it the Wallenda family name? The mystique of the Falls itself? The opportunity to view the most recent addition to the Falls' long history of daredevil acts which have included men and women going over the precipice in barrels, inner tubes, rubber balls, jet skis and some with only the clothes on their backs? Or is it possible that some of us wanted to see someone actually die on T.V.? Karl Wallenda's life-ending attempt to cross between those two buildings was not televised, that I remember, but was caught on film and is available on YouTube. All at the same time it is both difficult to watch and hard not to watch. Is it possible that some of us, for whatever reason, were out to capture some of this again last week? 

Karl Wallenda's last walk

   I had very little doubt that Nik Wallenda would make the walk successfully. As other-worldly as such tightrope stunts seem to us, to him they are second-nature. This is not to say that he takes them lightly. Far from it, he would point out that complacency is perhaps the biggest danger in undertakings such as this. Indeed, his great-grandfather Karl always thought that safety nets promoted complacency and were a danger in and of themselves. Hence the long history of performing without them.
   Wallenda plans more of the same in the future. Apparently a walk across the Grand Canyon is already in the works. It will be interesting to see what safety measures are employed. I'm sure the subject of the tether will come up once again. Will having used the tether once make it easier for him to agree to use it again? Or will it simply strengthen his resolve to never use it again....?