Sometime during early august 2009, school had started for Noblesville residents and students were reluctant to accept the reality as usual. Just as it was before break ended, I found myself scanning YouTube's trending page, jumping at any bright colored thumbnails like (any sensible gradeschooler.) the sensible gradeschooler I was. But this day (I don't actually know the date) I stumbled across something, opening a tab in my life that would remain open for years to come.

Parkour, in its simplest definition, is taking the quickest, most efficient route between point A and point B. To so many who started training On a regular basis just as I did, it’s come to mean so much more than that. In the words of David Belle, the founder of the movement, “Parkour brings you a sense of wellbeing. And when you are well, you want to help others feel well.”

On new year’s eve, 2013, B.A.S.E. Fitness hosted an overnight parkour jam, inviting any and all dedicated athletes in the hamilton county area. More than 60 traceurs of the 80 invited showed up to hone some of their skills in the incredible facility. B.A.S.E. is a 2000 square foot warehouse full of realistic obstacles one would find in an urban environment, a traceur’s paradise. What happened that night wasn’t anything spectacular in itself, just training - jumping, swinging, running, falling. I didn’t learn anything about parkour that night, despite the attendance of a few of the country’s best traceurs. I learned just how different our stories can be, how far our paths could deviate in the less than 20 years most of us there had lived. No to people present that night came from the same background, some had experienced divorce, death, homelessness, and some had come to know wealth and nothing but good opportunities but we were all united through the practice of parkour.

*Traceur: a practitioner of parkour

Through the first few weeks of the fourth grade, I was fascinated, obsessed with what I’d seen in that first video, I Freerun NY. I searched for any videos with the word “freerun” in the title, and through this I’d come to hear the term parkour thrown around in some of them. Before I knew it, there was a burning desire within me to emulate what I saw in the videos that made and still make up my subscriptions.

Noble Crossing’s playground wasn’t perfect for training but there was enough to practice the basic vaults and rolls (as if I was capable of much more as a 10 year old kid). I played the maneuvers over and over in my mind before recess everyday when my friend Arvin and I would get to it and drill the moves. After only a few days, some kids started watching at times, for a few seconds they would stare (maybe they figured we were crazy, throwing ourselves at the ground and what not). In a couple years, one of those kids that watched would join us and the three of us would be known as “those crazy parkour dudes”.

What we did on the playground wasn’t actually that different from what other kids were doing, perhaps the only difference was that there was a form to our “playing”. Thinking about it in these terms, when people ask me how I got into parkour and freerunning, I reply with, “I just never stopped doing what I did as a kid.”

Mid-July, 2014, My friend Hunter and I went up to Dunkirk, Indiana, a small, country town South of Columbus. Staying at a family-friend’s cabin, it was a vacation for us swimming in the small lake on the property and doing flips off the dock. That was all good and fun of course but what really interested us was what we saw of the town on the way in. An entire street of abandoned buildings caught our eye before we were through the shopping center of Dunkirk. We planned to head out there and check it out the next morning, and we did. To our dismay, we found all the doors of the buildings padlocked and boarded shut, except for one, the heavy, solid wood door swung open with a touch. We inconspicuously looked around for witnesses before ducking in and silently shutting the door behind us. The 10x20 foot room we found ourselves in was lined with shelves, sparsely spotted with old boxes of paperwork and cases of glass bottles, presumably what would have been recycled. The little light illuminating the space came from ivy covered holes in the wall’s bricks and the gaps between boards covering two windows at the back of the room. After looking through some of the old papers, the latest of which dated 1979, we found the building we were in was last used as a baseball clubroom. More importantly, a plain navy blue box on another otherwise empty shelf held in it a never-before-worn pair of Chuck Taylors, imagine that. Even cooler was the fact that they fit Hunter.

We were done investigating, We’d come to practice some parkour, and not much could be done in that place. On the back wall, a large metal door was leaned against the dilapidated bricks. Why was it there when it could be on the ground? We pushed the door over requiring a little bit of muscle, to find it had been covering a person sized hole leading to an otherwise inaccessible commons area between the street’s buildings. Between the street’s buildings. The other buildings also led to the overgrown lot before us. So after politely (maybe it was a little impulsive) kicking down an old door half hanging off its hinges, we made our way into the next building, this one a little more interesting. The light was even worse after we turned a corner into a room with no windows whatsoever. Using the handy-dandy light of our phones, we found a fridge, fully stocked believe it or not, with fresh rat poop, and moldy salad dressing. Next to the fridge was an old, heavy duty iron safe, not quite doing its job as the door fell off with a tug to reveal the treasure it had been protecting for years, a few dozen cans of wet cat food. We decided against trying to sell the cat food, knowing the fortune we’d gain would only weigh on our conscience. I headed to the stairs, Hunter in tow, stepping around the prius sized abyss in the middle of the kitchen (not very feng-shui if you ask me), and over the upside-down cast iron tub guarding the stairwell. We moved slowly, testing each step, falling through a couple times, all the way up the dark staircase and down a boring hallway. A small square room made itself known as I tripped over the transition strip between what was probably hardwood and carpet some time ago. The room itself was boring, just an old flannel couch smack in the middle, staring at a blank wall. Another staircase led up to the third floor, we went on with the same level of caution to a door at the end of another pitch dark hallway. There were windows on it, panes painted over, it revealed nothing of what was on the other side. Instinctively, I ripped it open.

Wooh boy, I did not expect what laid before us. It’s a good thing I didn’t kick this one down, because starting neatly at the doors threshold, where what should have been the biggest room yet was instead a hole, straight through all three stories. Below us was the destruction of three floors of construction materials, a small sea of plaster, insulation, shingles, wood and bricks. It was as if this room alone had been targeted by a house sized fist.

Sometimes, to me, parkour is not so much the fancy movements everyone associates it with, sometimes its just exploration. Explore what’s around you and see what you can do with it.

In April, 2015, Noblesville High School's annual film festival was announced once again. I’m not into cinematography myself but some of my friends are, and so, it wasn’t much of a surprise when I was asked to act as a stuntman in a video. I would go on to do some tricks in front of a camera with a few other traceurs around Noblesville. My friend was pretty good at what he did and together we won in our films category (definitely not because we were the only entrant). I don’t care that we won at all. I didn’t take any of the reward because for me, it was just another training day with some friends.

In the past few years of practice, parkour in general has distanced itself from what was emulation of others, and has become instead a sort of active meditation for me. Training has turned into an expression for me, an outlet. An art with which I can consolidate ideas and sort priorities. Parkour allows me to dwell in my mind while my instincts take care of my physical body. I don’t seek to make a living out of it, but instead make it something that helps me live each moment to the fullest.