Navigating an urban jungle

The rubber soles of my Adidas Sambas grip the stone underfoot.

I launch through the air, hoping to land on the thin flat top side of another large boulder.

Someone's here to spot me should I fall. But I'm not going to fall.

My feet come down, finding their narrow target like a jet landing on an aircraft carrier.

I hear the thud of my body mass meeting an immovable object. The thwack of my palms slapping against the rock. My hands make sure I'm balanced and ready to stand up and skip off onto another rock, and another.

This is parkour. A guy and a girl have already taken me through an agonizing round of stretches required to participate, then explained the origins of the "sport." A Frenchman apparently took the lessons learned from an intensive military combat course, and applied the evasive maneuvers to his own urban environment, as a way to enjoy his surroundings -- a different way to interact with his concrete jungle.

"It's a discipline where you explore your environment, looking for the most efficient and effective way to get through an area," said Dale "Freestyle Fox" McNew, a 22-year-old parkour enthusiast from Connersville. "But the training involves a lot more than that, and the whole thing is a lot more fun."

Basically, you run, climb, jump and roll your way through harsh concrete surroundings. You vault and "cat grab" through whatever labyrinthine structures you can find in your downtown area. On this recent Friday afternoon, the spot is the rock garden between the Indiana State Museum and the Eiteljorg, near the Canal.

"On occasion I guess you could swim," McNew said, "but I wouldn't recommend it."

There are enough scrapes, bruises and turned ankles without tempting fate. With parkour, you need your K-Swiss to be dry. The elements are difficult enough to manage without adding another variable.

Tanya Smith of Greenwood has been practicing parkour for about a year now, but was a dancer as a child, and a figure skater and gymnast in her early teens. The 19-year-old finds parkour another way to make her a more well-rounded person physically and mentally.

"If you're going to avoid injury, you need technique, mindfulness," Smith said. "You have to trust your fear, because it keeps you safe."

Smith has come far enough in the sport in one year to end up training with the famous Parkour Generations Indoor Academy in London.

"Which was basically an aerobics class, plus a body weight gymnastics class, plus some medieval torture," she said. "They make you walk on all fours back and forth across a room for 15 minutes. It sounds rough, but it fortifies you."

But I had to wonder, isn't this exactly the kind of recreation -- young people hurling their bodies at hard objects, balancing on thin surface areas -- that official city types might want to dissuade?

For the most part, McNew said, people don't seem to mind.

There are definitely "Stay on the path" signs here today, in this big rocky playground Downtown, but parkour isn't really big enough -- yet -- for it to have become a true urban nuisance.

"I've been at a school, late at night, had the police roll up and ask me what I was doing," McNew said. "And when I explained it, he actually said, 'Show me what you got.'."

Practice parkour

Parkour devotees Tanya Smith of Greenwood and Dale McNew of Connersville are looking for people interested in parkour to attend conditioning sessions every Saturday at 7 p.m., at various locations around Indianapolis.

E-mail Smith at yesterday_mag@yahoo.com or McNew at freestylefox@gmail.com for more info.

General info: www.americanparkour.com