Four Ways of Looking at a Rope

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2. As homage
Air-devil Philippe Petit told Reader's Digest in 1975, "Many high-wire walkers have died on their last step, thinking they had made it." The then-24-year-old Frenchman had to do more than step carefully in order to complete his most famous stunt—an illegal walk between the Twin Towers, captured in the 2008 Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire. Petit termed the challenge "impossible" but spent six years planning it. As for the execution, a troop of New Yorkers helped him haul a ton of equipment up the just-built towers in secret, and Petit huddled for hours on a beam to avoid detection before spending all night rigging the tightrope. By 7 a.m., he was faint with exhaustion but succeeded in making the quarter-mile-high crossing eight times in 45 minutes with no safety net as thousands watched below. Why did he do it? Because "life," he says in the film, "should be lived on the edge."