Won't Touch Ground
These days I rarely get much of a reaction from mammals who see the ways I can jump and move around. If they even notice, they probably figure it's natural ability or something like that, and for that reason I can only assume that most of them haven't spent any significant amount of time among rabbits. Rabbits are not known for our aerial agility. We're prone to injury from even minor falls, we lack the precision to jump to specific spots or to reliably land on our feet, and we can go head over heels just from running down a steep hill too fast. We're so averse to leaving ground level, in fact, that most of our homes don't have stairs in them, and many of us refuse to even ride in airplanes. So when I decided to take up the sport of parkour, it was just another thing I had to be the first at.
Most mammals who get into a thing like parkour can trace their interest back to one thing that set the spark, often something silly. In my case, I visited a friend of mine named Sharla who had just gotten her hooves on a Nintendoe Gamecube and some games. We played a bunch together, but what really got my attention was the at-the-time recent Prince of Purrsia: The Sands of Time. In the game, the lynx Prince had to navigate a crumbling palace full of traps and hazards using a repertoire of acrobatic stunts. The Prince could run up walls, could run across walls, he could roll, backflip, climb on ledges, balance on beams, and basically go anywhere he liked whenever he liked to. When I saw it, I had to take the controller and play around, not even progressing in the game but just running, climbing, jumping and flipping off things in the game world in every way I could think of. I got so entranced that I forgot Sharla was even there until she spoke up to tell me to stop being so boring.
At home, I got on my parents' computer and looked up every forum, review and article I could find about the game. It was on one of those pages that I first saw someone mention the word "parkour." I followed that thread and found videos of mammals gracefully running and jumping through urban areas and across the tops of buildings. A subset of daredevils did things like walk to the end of a crane and hang down with one paw, using the other to point the camera out at the scenery to give the viewer a nice sense of vertigo. I read about how they trained and conditioned their bodies, and found out that there were gyms where anyone could do it. I had always been an active kid—I could do a cartwheel, and I liked to jump up on hay bales and such—but it was only then that I thought I ought to train myself seriously in a martial art.
I did a lot more research and looked for gyms in my area. The nearest one was in a town forty minutes from where I lived, but eventually I convinced my parents to drive me. I knew from the videos what a parkour gym looked like, but I still couldn't help but get excited when I saw one for real. It was a maze of platforms, vault-boxes and swing-bars of all different heights, to me the most exciting playground I'd ever seen. The other students were almost all feline species, and while they were all younger than me, some as young as six or seven, the shortest one was more than a head taller than me. I was in a tank top and spandex gym shorts, but most of them wore T-shirts and loose pants—and I noticed I was the only one with footwear, thin-stretch polyamide running shoes previously owned by a second-cousin. I walked around and checked out the equipment, but I didn't talk to anyone before the class began.
The instructor was himself a lean jaguar, and when the clock struck the hour, he called for class to begin. My parents had come to check out the place, but I persuaded them not to stay for the whole class, so they left to go see the town. All of the students stood in a row, with the instructor in front and an older boy next to him, a teenage cheetah in a white T-shirt and track pants. The instructor went right into his prepared speech.
"Why do we train parkour?" he began. "Let me put it another way. I imagine you all like playing outside, running, climbing, and exploring all the interesting places in the world, right? You remember the first time you made it to the lowest branches of a tree? Or jumped off a trampoline and landed on your feet on the ground? How about the first time you reached your top running speed in an open field? Do you remember how it felt?"
The others were starting to smile. I smiled, too, but there weren't too many trees around where I grew up, and I couldn't say I ever remembered climbing one. And there had certainly never been any trampolines in my neighborhood.
"It felt good, right? Why do you think that is? It's a simple truth: movement is delightful. Primally satisfying. But we all grow up, and we're told to stop running, stop jumping, climbing and exploring. We stop going to playgrounds, climbing trees and sprinting through fields just for the exhilaration of it. Parkour practitioners, or traceurs, don't stop, because we understand that to move and explore is a fundamental aspect of being an animal. We train our bodies so there's nowhere we can't go, and we never stop looking for new opportunities and challenges. Every challenge we meet emboldens us and motivates us to challenge ourselves further. And through it all, we're part of an inclusive and supportive society that wants nothing more than for you to succeed."
He paused, and looked across the stars in his pupils' eyes.
"Let's get started," he said.
The first thing he had us do was warm up. We nodded our heads as far back and forward as we could, slowly at first, then progressively faster. Then we turned our heads side to side, then touched the sides of our heads to our shoulders. We moved on to rolling our shoulders, elbows, wrists and fingers, then our hips, knees, ankles and toes, until every one of our joints was loose and flexible.
After that, our first lesson was to jump in place. This was a simple exercise for us to get comfortable with getting off the ground. The instructor had us stand straight up and jump as high as we could using only our ankles and toes. Then he had us use our legs, bending our knees down and pushing up while keeping our arms at our sides. Finally he let us jump with our entire bodies, arching our backs and swinging our arms up to reach the highest height we possibly could. At each stage he gave us plenty of time to keep trying and get the movements down.
"Now let's try a precision jump." He motioned toward the teenage cheetah, who was still standing next to him. "Dustin's been coming here for just over eight years. He'll demonstrate."
Dustin stepped up onto a foot-high jumping board, about five feet apart from another of the same height. He stood with his feet together, bent both knees down to a low crouch and put his arms behind him. He swung his arms up and leapt forward. He flew in an arc to the other board and landed with the balls of both feet on the edge, his heels hanging in the air.
The instructor went on. "Start by doing it on the floor. Put your feet together, pick a spot in front of you and see if you can jump precisely onto it. Then pick a spot a little further away and keep going."
The orderly row scattered as we all went in different directions. I jumped just two feet at first, then three. Any more, and I started getting a little off from the spot I'd picked. The instructor gave us a chance to try it on the boards, and we all lined up. With the boards three feet apart, I was a little wobbly on the landing, but I made it.
The rest of the time was spent showing us the equipment and some basic moves to use it safely. Dustin demonstrated a variety of vaults over a barrier that was about the height of his waist, then let us try. Waist-height for him was nearly head-height for me, so I had to jump up just to get my feet on top of it. It was more of a climb-over than a vault. Dustin also showed us how to swing on the bars, and how to climb onto high platforms.
After the hour-long lesson, there was a two-hour open gym session, and I had told my parents not to come pick me up until the end of the entire three hours. Older kids started arriving to practice. I thought about going to talk to Dustin, but he was quickly surrounded by some friends, and I decided against it. I spent a bit of time practicing the vaults, then did some cartwheels and jumped off some boxes until I spied a pit full of foam cubes at one end of the gym, nestled between two high platforms with some bars going across. I climbed to the top of the platform on the right and jumped into the pit like a swimming pool. It was so much fun that I climbed back up and did it two more times.
When I got up after the third jump, I saw Dustin and his friends walking over to me.
"Hey," Dustin said with a smile. "You're quite a Hopper, aren't you?"
I wasn't quite sure how to take that, but I decided on returning his smile.
"Your moves are pretty all right for your first day. Why don't you come over and try something a little more challenging?"
His friends started rearranging some of the boxes and barriers. When they had put together what looked like an impressive obstacle course, Dustin got into the designated starting position and got set.
He took off. He started with a series of vaults over barriers of various heights. At the end of that was a pair of platforms across from one another, one at about his shoulder-height and the other taller than him; he ran and jumped off the shorter wall to gain height and reach the top of the taller one, grabbing the edge with both paws and pulling himself up. He went on with barely a break in his movement, swung on bars, jumped up and down to platforms of various heights, jumped off walls, and strode across the tops of thin beams. All the while, his flow was perfect. He never stopped moving, not even for an instant. It was like a work of art.
He jumped off a tall platform onto a lower one and rolled forward to absorb the impact. His roll took him to the edge of the lower platform, and the instant his paw pads touched down, he sprang up and jumped. The gap was eight feet across and six feet down, with mats at the bottom. His powerful legs launched him into an arc that carried him all the way from one side to the other, and he landed with both feet precisely on the edge of the opposite platform, just as he had done at the beginning of class. After he stuck the landing, he stood straight up on his toes and held out his arms in a triumphant pose. His friends cheered. He bent down and casually dropped to ground level.
"What do you think of that?" he said to me.
I couldn't help but smile. "That was pretty great," I said.
"Why don't you give it a try?" he said.
My smile faded. I glanced back at the course, which had looked impressive before but now suddenly looked imposing and intimidating.
"I know it looks tough, but you're a tough bunny, right? I bet you can rise to the challenge."
The moment he spoke the word "challenge," my mind was set. I put on the most determined face I could and said, "I'll do it."
I got in position and took a few deep breaths before I started. The barriers weren't too hard, although I still couldn't quite swing my legs over and had to climb. I didn't even want to try the wall-run and jump—instead, I jumped and reached for the top of the lower wall, climbed up, then turned around and jumped to the higher platform.
I made my way through the obstacles, the jumps, vaults and swings, but in contrast to Dustin I had no flow at all. I had to stop at nearly every obstacle to reorient myself and work out what to do next. I struggled to pull myself up the walls, and to jump down any significant height I had to turn around, hang off the edge and drop. On the balance beams, instead of striding across in a smooth motion, I jumped to them one at a time, bringing my feet together at each step.
At the final stage, I dropped from the high platform and stood before the gap. My legs were less than half as long as Dustin's, so a challenging jump for him looked like an insurmountable gulf to me. But giving up wasn't an option. I backed up as far as I could, back to the wall, and burst into a sprint. I leapt off the very edge of the platform.
I hit the side of the opposite wall and fell on my butt on the mats. Dustin and his friends laughed out loud, not even hiding that my failure was a source of amusement for them. I did my best to suppress the twitch in my nose, grit my teeth, and returned to the starting position. When they saw that I was going to take another shot at it, they could barely contain their anticipation. Dustin called, "Careful you don't break your leg on that fall!" I didn't want to tell him that a few of my siblings had broken limbs falling off jungle gyms and the like.
I tried to advance through the obstacles a little faster the second time, but I was still far from smooth. At the gap, I summoned all the strength in my legs and leapt for it, but again I came up short and fell on the mats. The others laughed even harder, and I raced back to run the course a third time. I fell at the gap yet again, and as I went back for a fourth attempt, Dustin spoke up.
"All right, Hopper, it's been fun, but we ought to get back to our own thing." His group started to break off. "By all means, keep trying, though, I'm sure you're right on the cusp of getting it."
I stood by myself for a few minutes, and when it seemed like no one was looking, I retreated to the bathroom. I splashed cold water on my face and paws and looked at myself in the mirror for a bit. Then I turned and punched the paper towel dispenser as hard as I could. I wailed on it over and over—I imagined the metal warping and denting under my blows, but it stayed defiantly in shape. Next I kicked in the stall door, which swung and hit the wall with a bang, then I leaned back into the corner of the room and slid down into a seated position. I held my head in my paws and muttered, "Stupid jerks …"
I got on the public phone, called my parents and told them class had ended early. I waited outside, and when they pulled up, I got in the back without saying anything.
They looked around, probably noticing that I was the only kid being picked up at that time. They looked at each other for a moment before my mom said, "How was your first class, sweetie?"
I remembered to put on a smile and said, "Fun. Really fun."
"So you want to keep coming?"
"Yeah."
They still looked uneasy, but they accepted my answer. We drove home without saying any more.
Beginner-level classes were twice weekly, with open gym every weekday, but since it was so far from home I could only go on Friday afternoons. Dustin was there every single week, always keeping an eye on me, ready with some snicker or snide remark every time I fell or didn't take a move as gracefully as he could. His harassment was so constant that eventually I stopped trying anything difficult in class and just killed time doing things like climbing on boxes until it was time to leave. The rest of the week I practiced on hay and fences, out in the fields where no one could see me. I tried the moves over and over and over, and sometimes when I fell I just lay where I had landed and cried out in frustration at my body that wouldn't move the way I wanted it to.
One day, about a half-hour into open gym, Dustin and two of his friends, a leopard and a bobcat, came up to me. Dustin said, "We're going out for a run. Want to join us?"
Wary, I said, "Why?"
"Why? Running is what we do. You've been coming here for a while now, wouldn't you like to get some real-world experience?"
My eyes darted back and forth between them.
"I understand if you're nervous, if you don't think you can keep up with us," he went on. "In that case, you're free to stay here and keep practicing."
He knew how to push my buttons. Just as they were all turning away, I said, "Wait! I'm coming with you!"
We gathered on the sidewalk and stretched a bit to re-loosen our joints. Dustin started off, and the rest of us followed him.
We made our way to Main Street, at first like it was a normal jog down the sidewalk. It was a small town, but there were more densely-packed multi-story buildings than the mostly-flat skylines of my hometown. Dustin's eyes scanned back and forth. He spotted a dumpster against the wall of a small convenience store, and with just a point of his fingers, all of them knew what to do. They ran in a line and, one after the other, jumped on top of the dumpster and up to the roof. I had to climb on the dumpster, jump up high to grab the edge and pull myself up. By the time I made it, the others were far ahead of me, and I had to pick up the pace to catch up with them.
The bobcat slid on his back over the top of an air conditioner, and the leopard jumped low and slid through the two-foot space under a pipe. I tried to do the slide over the AC myself, but I ended up just sitting on top of it and had to get on my feet and jump off. We ran from roof to roof until the buildings got sparser, then Dustin jumped to street level and slowed back down to a jog. I was secretly grateful and caught up to them before slowing down myself, trying hard not to look out of breath. Dustin called back, "You still with us, Hopper?" I didn't respond.
We approached the outskirts of town. The first thing I saw over the horizon were the tips of smokestacks, followed shortly thereafter by the brick structures of an abandoned complex. The three-story facade of the main building faced us, many of its large windows broken.
"We scoped out this power plant a while ago, but we never got a chance to explore it until now," Dustin said.
"We're going in there?" I said.
"Yep."
"Isn't that trespassing?"
"Trust me, traceurs do this sort of thing all the time. Explore all the interesting places in the world, remember? It's not like we're bothering anyone, so most mammals consider it harmless. I can understand if you're scared, though—there's some risk, but as long as you know what you're doing you should be fine."
They jumped the chain-link fence and started searching for a way in. I followed. The front door was locked, naturally, but Dustin found an open window and, gripping the top of the frame, swung himself inside feet first. His friends followed, and I got in by climbing over the sill.
The interior was breathtaking. The three floors wrapped around a spacious central chamber that went up all the way to the roof. Most of the equipment had been taken away, but a few tanks, turbines, control stations and the like remained, and Dustin and his friends went at them like cubs unleashed. They pulled out all the stops—they jumped and climbed on everything around them, they did frontflips, backflips, flips off walls, flips off rails, and every other kind of stunt I could imagine. They seemed elated at this chance to go wild with their skills.
I found myself hanging back and watching them. Once they had gone from one end of the first floor to the other, they jumped on a turbine and ran from the small end to the large, which came up just high enough to jump to the second floor catwalk. Much of the flooring of the catwalk was gone, leaving only the steel support beams. They strode across the beams, and Dustin even jumped into a flip off the final one. They vaulted over the railing and jumped on and off control panels and concrete barriers. When they had done all they could on the second floor, they proceeded to the third by climbing on a panel and up through a hole in the ceiling.
Until then I was doing all I could to stay with them, but on the third floor I found my courage and decided to join in the fun. I picked the nearest barrier and vaulted over it, and though I still had to place my outside foot on top I managed to slip my inside foot through and keep going on the other side without losing my momentum. The others noticed, stood back and watched.
I vaulted over another barrier, jumped to a control panel and off in the opposite direction. I grabbed a beam above me, swung and landed some distance from where I had started. I glanced back. A smile was forming on the bobcat's face, and he seemed almost ready to raise one paw in a fist bump before Dustin shot him a glance and he cut it out. I went for another control panel, but just as I was jumping on it, Dustin called, "That's enough. Let's get out of here before you hurt yourself." They all turned away and started heading back down through the hole.
I followed them to the second floor. They left the plant through another open window and dropped to ground level outside. I carefully lowered myself down the outside wall, dropped and ran to catch up with them.
"Where are you going? I was just getting started!" I called.
Dustin stood still for a moment, then turned around. His face showed no trace of joy from our adventure. His eyes were narrow, and his snout was just slightly flaring.
"Look, I get it. You had your fun, and you were probably inspired by all that stuff about the joy of movement and all that, but don't you know when to quit? It was amusing seeing a bunny in class for a little while, but how are you not getting that you're totally out of your element? You're never going to be any good at this, so why don't you stop wasting everyone's time and go home?"
My nose twitch was back, right in front of him this time. I hoped he didn't notice. He signalled to his friends, and they turned to leave.
I looked back at the power plant. There was a smokestack front and center on the roof of the main building, with a catwalk encircling it that protruded just over the edge. I also noticed that the transformer substation nearby had a cylindrical tank at its wall, with some remains of a ladder and pipes going up and across.
I'll show them 'out of my element', I thought.
I went up to the tank and surveyed it. The ladder was unusable, but a smooth metal pipe went straight up the side. I jumped up and gripped it as tight as I could, and with my rubber soles I was just able to hold on. I slid down here and there, but inch by inch I managed to pull myself up.
It wasn't until I had just about made it that Dustin and his friends saw what I was doing. They ran back right as I reached the transformers at the top of the tank, and just for show, I stood on top of the connecting beam, stuck both arms out and balanced my way to the end. I heard Dustin call, "What are you doing up there?"
From the end of the beam I had just enough height to jump and reach the next section of rooftop. The others tried to climb up after me, but with their bare feet they couldn't get a grip on the pipe. Dustin called again. "Hopper, um, we're leaving now, so you should come down and come back with us. I'm serious, we're gonna leave you behind!"
I ran along air ducts to the top of the air conditioner, which was tall enough for me to jump to the next rooftop. The main building was just ahead of me, along with the smokestack and the catwalk, and I had it absolutely set in my mind that I was going to walk to the end of that catwalk and hang down over the edge of the roof by one paw.
The only thing in my way was an eight-foot gap.
I walked to the edge and looked down. It was a straight drop onto bare dirt. Now Dustin was really losing it. "Hopper, come on! We call this overextending yourself, and it's not good, no matter who you are! Come down from there, you know this is a bad idea!"
I stood back as far as I could and crouched low. I took a deep breath, then took off as fast as I could and leapt.
I knew the instant my feet left the ledge that I wasn't going to make it. I slammed my chest into the corner of the main building and reached out with my paws, raking the roof for something to grab onto, but with all my momentum being transferred in the opposite direction I slipped off and went into freefall. I plummeted all thirty-six feet down to Earth.
Most of the impact went through my right leg. The crunch reverberated through my entire body; I didn't hear myself scream, but I'm told it was loud enough to startle some joggers nearly a mile away. Dustin and his friends just about sprinted to where I had fallen.
The pain was so great I felt dizzy. Through my swirling vision I caught a glimpse of a piece of my tibia jutting through the skin, with a lot of blood running down my shin and matting my fur. A wave of nausea hit me, enough that I might have thrown up right there.
Dustin slipped off his shirt, balled it up, and, holding me around the shoulders with his other arm, pressed it against the wound. I cried out, but he held firm and said in my ear, "Shh, shh. It's okay, you're going to be okay." Then, under his breath: "You dumb fucking bunny."
By then, the leopard had already flipped open his cell phone and started dialing numbers. Within a few minutes the ambulance pulled up, along with some police and all of our parents. Two paramedics lifted me onto a stretcher and took me and my parents in the back of the ambulance. We drove off, leaving everyone else behind.
I didn't stop crying the entire time the doctors took to get me into the operating room and take the X-rays. I only quieted down when they gave me a sedative so they could set the bones. They wrapped the whole thing in a plaster cast, had a long conversation with my parents that I don't remember, and we went home.
They gave me a pair of crutches to get around on, which was all right for school and such, but at home I didn't feel like doing anything except sit on the couch and watch TV. When the weekend rolled around, I stayed in bed and re-read a few of my favorite comic books. The doorbell rang, and my parents answered it. I heard footsteps approach my room. My dad opened my door and said, "Hey, champ. Someone's here to see you."
He stepped aside and let Dustin in. Dustin stood awkwardly at the front of the room with both paws behind his back, and after a moment, Dad left us alone.
"Hey," Dustin said.
"Hey."
"My parents are in the other room, talking to your parents."
"Did they make you come here to apologize?"
"Okay, I admit that after what happened I had no choice but to tell them everything. They gave me a nice, big lecture about the way I've been acting. But they didn't make me come here. I wanted to."
I put my comic book down and listened.
"Can I see it?" he said.
I moved the blanket aside and showed him the cast. He looked at it a moment and said, "Good that they got it patched up."
"Are you satisfied? This is exactly what you said would happen."
"Look, I know I teased you about breaking your leg, but I didn't expect you to actually go and do it."
"Whatever."
He shifted his weight and brought his left paw out in front of him. In it was a small-ish brown cardboard box, held shut with a bit of tape.
"Everyone at the gym chipped in for this. Something to help you feel better." He put it at the foot of the bed, and I leaned over to pick it up.
I ripped through the tape and lifted the flaps. It was full of snack foods. Protein bars advertising calcium fortification. Dried vegetables and chips of all flavors. And lots of sweets. There were bags of different kinds of candy, and digging down I found a pack of frosted carrot-flavored cookies. I held them up and gave Dustin a look that said, "Seriously?" He shrugged.
He brought his other paw forward. This one was holding another box: a shoebox.
"And here's a little something just from me."
I took the box from him and opened it. Inside was a brand-new pair of polyamide running shoes. With them was a card, with a picture of a cat in silhouette mid-leap across a grassy plain, the sunset behind him. I could only imagine how long Dustin had to shop to find one so specifically relevant. On the backside was a paw-written message that read, "Judy, I'm really sorry about the way I treated you. I hope you get a chance to use these soon. Keep hopping. Dustin."
"I guess rabbits prefer those," he said. "Not having paw pads and all, I imagine running on asphalt starts to hurt after a while. Most cats prefer to go natural. Those are good-quality, by the way. They won't wear out as fast as your old ones."
I put the card down next to me and closed the box. In spite of myself, I was smiling. "Thanks," I said.
"Can I tell you something?" He looked away and fidgeted a bit. "I was six years old when I started parkour, and I did fall down a lot at first, almost as much as you. It took a lot of years before I could do the sorts of things I do now, but once I could, I heard mammals say things like, 'Well of course a cheetah would be able to run like that.' They didn't think about all the work I put in, you know?"
"I suppose."
"All the same, I sort of got it in my head that parkour was one of those things that was special about felines, something that set us apart from other species. So when I saw you there in class, it just galled me. I thought, there's no way a rabbit could learn parkour—and if you did, then it must not have been so special after all. I made you do things way over your head and go out to dangerous places to try to scare you off, simply put. But I never wanted you to get hurt. I recognize, though, that it was largely the way I was acting that led to this."
He gave an awkward smile and looked at the floor. "Do you know how parkour was invented?"
"No," I said.
"It actually evolved out of military obstacle courses. A tiger named David Zelle trained on those courses and decided to dedicate his life to fitness and discipline. He formed a group with a focus on fostering skills for moving and getting around in the world—jumping, climbing, balancing, swimming, things like that—and they trained on natural terrain like trees and cliffs, and on mammal-made structures like city buildings. Cats made up most of the group, because they took most easily to the moves, but there were other species as well: wolves, raccoons, antelopes … I think there was a camel at one point. Anyway, the philosophy was never about who did it best. Anyone with the drive for self-improvement was welcome."
"That's nice, I guess."
"I need to tell you something else as well. Whenever I told you to do something difficult, or go on that run with us, I was hoping you would give up, or fall behind until we lost you. But, even though you didn't look great while you were doing it, you made it over almost every obstacle and kept going, and that only irritated me more. I wouldn't admit it at the time, but you're really pretty impressive. You have the drive. You could be a great traceur if you stick with it."
Again, I couldn't help but smile. "All right. I accept your apology," I said.
He spied the CRT television in the corner of the room with a Gamecube hooked up. He pointed to it and said, "Neat."
"Yeah," I said. "My friend got one, and once I tried it I had to get one of my own."
He thumbed through the small stack of games, pulled one out and flashed it to me with a grin. It was Prince of Purrsia.
"This game is great." He put it back in the stack and said, "Anyway, I'll leave you alone now." He walked to the door, and as he opened it, he looked back and added, "I'll see you around, right?"
"I'll think about it."
He nodded, then left and closed the door behind him. I waited until I couldn't hear his footsteps before I opened up the carrot cookies.