Petaluma’s Eleanor McCall walks the line (slackline, that is)

Yoga instructor brings balancing sport to local parks|

“Falling is a part of the process,” says Eleanor McCall, as she balances gracefully on a gently bouncing, 2-inch-wide web - better known as a “slackline” - suspended a few feet above the grass at Petaluma’s Wickersham Park. McCall raises her right leg behind her, now standing on the left, her arms and hands lifted above her shoulders, as if about to take hold of an enormous imaginary balloon. She tilts her face up to catch the dappled sunlight peeking through the branches and leaves of the trees above. Then she lowers her leg back to the line, and begins to walk, step-by-step – though “dance” might be a better word – backwards. Finally, moving slowly as the line sways, she lies down, still solidly balanced above the ground. “With beginners, the first thing we tell them is that falling is fine,” McCall smiles, her eyes closed, bobbing slightly up-and-down on the line. “When you are starting out on the slackline,” she adds, “everybody falls on their way to learning how to walk.”

McCall is the founder of Petaluma Slackliners Club, which meets twice a month at Wickersham Park for what she calls “Slackin’ Saturdays!” Here and there are half-a-dozen brightly colored slacklines - ribbon-like webbing made of nylon, polyester and other materials - stretched out between a total of five trees. Most of the lines are only a foot or two off the ground. From a distance, the arcs of webbing give the appearance of “do-not-enter” warning tape, suggesting some uber-whimsical construction site, or maybe the world’s happiest crime scene.

The shortest line is about 10 feet from tree to tree. The longest here is 70 feet. On each tree, about eye-level above where the webbing is strapped to the trunk, McCall has posted pictures of dogs and other animals, to give new slackliners something to focus on.

“It’s one thing to say, ‘Don’t look at the ground,’” she says, now standing back on terra firma. “But unless you have something to focus your eyes on, it’s really hard not to look down at first. So I put up the dog faces. It really helps.”

If you were to google the word “slacklining,” you’d learn that that slacklining is widely considered an extreme sport - especially in such styles as “tricklining,” “urban slacklining,” “highlining,” “windlining” and “rodeo slacklining.” According to McCall, slacklining began in the late 1960s within the rock-climbing community at Yosemite, and has since become an umbrella term for a whole number of activities from yoga practice to circus arts to physical therapy to – in McCall’s case – personal growth and good, multi-generational neighborhood fun.

“My brother got into it first, and said. “Hey El, come try this!’” she recalls. “At first, I just didn’t believe I could ever do it. But then I did, and I fell in love with it. Now, whenever I’m having a tough day, while some go to their yoga mat, I go to my slackline.”

McCall, it should be noted, is a certified yoga instructor, and does use slacklining as part of her own yoga practice. A graduate of SSU, she actually wrote her Master’s thesis on slacklining. The title: “Slacklining as a Mindfullness Practice: A Heuristic Self-Inquiry into Increasing Mind-Body Consciousness to Promote Healing and the Individuation Process.”

With her sister and brother, and the support of her mom, McCall started doing slacklining in parks about four years ago, occasionally leading workshops at yoga festivals and other events, and officially formed the Petaluma Slackliners Club around a year ago.

“We’re about creating a space to celebrate embodiment,” she says. “And the club is just about spreading slacklining into the community.”

Unlike walking a tightrope - to which slacklining bears a strong resemblance - a slack line is intentionally bouncy. It reverberates and mirrors the movements of the person walking the line.

“You can get them online now,” McCall says. “A 30-foot slackline can be anywhere from $40 to $700 for a professional rig. It takes five minutes to set up and five minutes to break down.”

On Slackin’ Saturdays, McCall always leads 45 minutes of yoga at the beginning of the session, followed by two hours or so of slacklining practice, open to anyone who wants to give it a try. All skill-levels are invited, from first-timers to experienced slackliners. Participants are required to sign a release, and McCall emphasizes that beginners are given plenty of one-on-one attention to start out.

“There’s no wrong way to slackline, but there’s definitely a safe way to slackline,” she says.

McCall’s ultimate goal is to found her own yoga studio, with slacklining a key element of the operation.

“Oh, slacklining will be a part of it,” she says. “Anything emphasizing mindfulness.”

McCall points out that while slacklining can be incredibly empowering, it does look intimidating at first, and even she was hesitant to give it try. She describes herself as a recovering anorexic and bulimic, now celebrating nine years of being healthy.

“I don’t hide any of that, since it’s just a part of my journey,” she says, admitting that her tendency toward brutal self-judgement made the very idea of slacklining seem terrifying.

“I just looked at it and said, ‘I can’t do this, it looks so hard,”” she says. “The first time I put my foot up on the line, with my brother Michael there, I just started laughing, ‘Ha ha ha!’ I couldn’t even believe I would ever be able to do it. But then something happened, way down inside me, and I just really wanted it. I wanted to do it, so I kept at it, over and over, until I could stand and then walk the line, all on my own. It was life-changing. And ever since, slacklining has been a big part of my coming back into my body. So when people say they can’t possibly do it, I can honestly say, ‘I know how you feel, because that’s how I felt. But if you keep at it, your self judgement and doubt will fall away eventually.’”

By 2:00 in the afternoon, about 20 people are here, of all experience levels, taking turns walking on the different slacklines. From a small boom-box, music plays, but the most notable sound one hears is that of laughter and shouts of excitement and encouragement.

“Nice! Yay! Look at you!” McCall offers, as a visitor successfully takes a few unaided steps on one of the longer lines. When the newcomer finally steps off the line, her expression reveals a tiny bit of disappointment that she didn’t make it all the way across. “The red one’s hard,” McCall says, explaining, “The longer the lines, the more difficult they are, because there’s more tension, more sag. Why don’t you try the one-inch, the yellow line over there? It’s a shorter distance and even though the webbing is just one-inch wide, it’s actually a little easier than you think it is.”

As the students moves over to the yellow line, she gets more words of reassurance from the other slackliners.

“Learning together means learning faster,” McCall says. “It all starts with one step. When you finally do that first step on your own, you immediately want to take the next one. And then you never want to stop.”

(Contact David at david.templeton@arguscourier.com or call him at 776-8462)

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