Philippe Petit, The Man On Wire (Part One)

On August 7, 1974, a twenty-five year old man named Philippe Petit walked across a 200 foot wire between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, 1,350 feet above the ground, something that even the policeman who arrested him described as a once in a lifetime event.

On the night of June 25^th and the early morning of June 26^th ,1971 Philippe Petit and his associates ascended the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral.  Blondeau tossed a fishing line attached to a tennis ball to Petit in the other tower.  A thicker rope was attached to this initial line and then pulled across the gap between the two towers, this process repeated with thicker ropes until the heavy metal cable was attached to a rope and pulled across the open space.  Petit and Blondeau worked all night, securing the wire until the early morning hours of Saturday.  Then, to the amazement of the ever increasing group of tourists that gathered in the plaza in front of the cathedral, Petit, dressed in his typical all black clothing walked on to the cable and for three hours, juggled balls and pins, walked rapidly back and forth and even lay on his back as the crowd applauded below.

Assisted by some local Australians he met in Nimbin, he persuaded a local wire distributor to give him the requisite cable in exchange for a performance of magic and juggling for the company’s employees.  With huge padlocked doors impossible to pick or penetrate, Petit hacksawed his way in through barred gaps high above the ground and, with his newfound friends, reconnoitered both pylons at night.  Eventually they were able to rig the bridge in preparation for the crossing scheduled to occur on June 3, 1973.  At rush hour on the morning of June 3, Petit ascended the wire and crossed several times, pausing again to perform his trademark move of lying on his back for several minutes, supported only by the thin cable, almost three hundred feet above the ground.

It was three weeks before Petit took the subway downtown and, for the first time, got a look at the Twin Towers in person.  Even he was humbled by the magnitude of both buildings, recalling later that the same word kept unconsciously repeating in his mind: Impossible! But, even on this first attempt at reconnaissance, Petit would access forbidden stairwells, avoid police and, when encountering construction workers, act as if he belonged.  Although it took an hour, he finally emerged, alone on the top of one of the Twin Towers.  Far from complete, the building did not even have a guardrail.  It was 1,350 feet high and eventually contained 110 stories.  Petit was still so intimidated that when he got to the edge of the structure he could barely look down and focused instead on the distance between the two towers.

It is approximately 7 AM, soon the entire area will be crawling with workers and security.  Petit knows it is now or never.  He is utterly exhausted and has gotten virtually no sleep for two consecutive days.  Later, Blondeau would call the wire the worst they had ever rigged together.  Both he and Jean Francois Heckel were also terrified, believing that it was very possible that Petit could fall.  But Petit had already made up his mind.

            “I had to make a decision of shifting my weight from one foot anchored to the building to the one foot anchored on the wire.  This is possibly the end of my life, to step on that wire, but on the other hand something that I could not resist, I did not make any effort to resist, something called me on to the cable. And death is very close.”