Faith Dickey is one of the greatest highliners in the world. In 2012, Faith broke the record for the longest free solo, that's highlining without a safety harness. Then in 2014, she became the first woman to cross a highline over 100 meters long.
Faith Dickey is one of the greatest highliners in the world. In 2012, Faith broke the record for the longest free solo, that's highlining without a safety harness. Then in 2014, she became the first woman to cross a highline over 100 meters long.
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Shelby Stanger:
If you've spent a summer afternoon in your local park, chances are you've seen a slackline tied between two trees. The line is suspended a couple of feet off the ground and people try to walk across it. They delicately place one foot in front of the other using their arms to help them balance.
What you may not have seen is highlining. It's like slacklining on steroids. Instead of balancing a few feet from the ground, highliners suspend the line across huge canyons or between tall buildings. The line is only about an inch or two wide, and it's often hundreds or thousands of feet in the air. Faith Dickey is one of the greatest highliners in the world. In 2012, Faith broke the record for the longest free solo, that's highlining without a safety harness. Then in 2014, she became the first woman to cross a highline over 100 meters long.
I'm Shelby Stanger and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studio's production. Faith Dickey has made a career out of highlining and breathtaking places. Early on, she traveled around Europe, scraping together gear sponsorships until she started getting hired for TV work. At one point, Faith even starred in a Volvo commercial where she walked a line between two moving trucks. Faith is one of the first professional highliners in the world and a pioneer for women in the sport. On top of that, she became a top tier highliner without any athletic background.
Faith Dickey, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Faith Dickey:
Thank you for having me.
Shelby Stanger:
You've had a lot of wild ideas. I'm really excited to talk to you. I've been following your career for a while now. For those who don't know, you participate in slacklining and specifically highlining. Can you just give us the basic definition, like what's slacklining? What's highlining? How is it different than tightrope walking?
Faith Dickey:
Absolutely. I think by now a lot of people know what slacklining is, but there's still people who've never heard of it. It's very similar to tightrope walking as in it's a balanced sport. The difference being that a tightrope is like a steel cable that's completely taut and a tightrope walker uses a long pole to walk, so that helps them balance. Where slacklining is different is that it's a flat woven rope usually made of nylon or polyester that's extremely strong, but it's flexible and it moves. And so when you walk on it, you just use your arms to balance. And then highlining is when you take a slackline and you move it high off the ground. There's no official designation for what a highline is, but typically we say if you need a harness, it's a highline.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay, that's so interesting. I didn't know the differentiation. I mean, I just knew it was high up when you highline. Pictures of highliners are pretty incredible, especially you Faith. Okay, so how did you find highlining? I've seen pictures of you doing it in high heels and dresses and cowboy boots. I know you said you've had this persona of being a badass for a long time, but you are a badass. How did you come to find highlining?
Faith Dickey:
So when I was eight years old, I decided I wanted to be a fashion designer and I clung to that passion all the way until I graduated high school and it was my dream, right? I was hellbent on going to New York City and becoming a famous fashion designer. But I don't come from a background of wealth. I came from a single parent home. I was totally on my own financially. And so I was working six different jobs trying to save money to get to New York City and go to my dream college. I happened to fall asleep driving my car and I crashed it one night coming home from work. It was literally because I was working way too much and I was 19 years old and I just didn't know how else to reach those dreams. I came away unhurt, but I totaled my car. It was just a terrifying moment to wake up in a car flipping over.
Crashing that car was a huge wake-up call. And by taking some time for myself to kind of reevaluate my choices and what I was doing with my life, I started spending a lot of time in this park in Austin called Zilker. And there happened to be a slackline between two trees and I would see that slackline every day that I would go to the park and sit and read and reflect. So finally I was like, "Okay, I guess I'll give it a try." And I went over with a friend who knew what slacklining was. He held my hand, I stood on the line, fell off immediately, and I was like, "Okay, there's no way I'm going to ever do this. It's way too hard." So I went back to reading my book and hanging out in the park.
So fast-forward to two weeks later, I've been seeing that line every day. I was often at the park alone. The guy who set up the line was pretty cute. I was like, "All right, I'll go give it a shot." And I went over and was able to take one step and somehow just that moment of taking one step on something that seemed so impossible caught me and suddenly all I wanted to do was slackline. So I started showing up every day. That guy who I started with, he's actually the one who told me, "You're going to walk a highline one day." I wasn't a climber, I wasn't a gymnast. I didn't do anything extreme at the time other than work too much and so I was like, "Yeah, sure man, whatever."
But about a year goes by, I was really into slacklining, but just between trees and I decided to travel. I was like, "Okay, going to college and racking up tons of debt is a really scary decision. I'm going to take some time for myself and travel a little bit." So I booked a one-way trip to Europe and I went to London and I bopped around in London and I worked a few illegal jobs under the table and I had my slackline with me and I went to the park and I didn't meet a single other slackliner. So my travels took me to Germany next. I knew someone who was au pair there. There were slacklines in every single park in Germany that I passed. Everyone was doing it. It was not a new thing. So I was like, "Okay, cool. At least I see that the sport has some people behind it." There used to be a website called Couchsurfing. I don't know if anyone's familiar with it anymore.
Shelby Stanger:
Oh yeah, that was a great site. You could stay at random people's places.
Faith Dickey:
It was like we finally got over the serial killers of the '80s and we were like, "All right, I'll sleep in a stranger's house." So I contacted a guy in Berlin who had a picture on a slackline on Couchsurfing and he was like, "Hey, I'm going to a slackline festival so I won't be home" and I was like, "What? There's festivals. Can I come?" And he was like, "Yeah, of course. Just buy a train ticket to this place." So I traveled to southern Germany and met this stranger at a slackline festival. And that was my first introduction to slackline culture, to highlining, to long lines, which is where you take your slackline and stretch it really long distances between trees, which makes it a lot harder. And mind you, I was 20 years old, so I was really open to experiences and meeting people. I just completely became infatuated with the sport.
Shelby Stanger:
Even though Faith had years of experience on a slackline, highlining is a completely different ballgame. When you stand in front of a highline at the edge of an abyss, this primal fear sets in. All of your instincts tell you do not step forward. The first time Faith tried highlining, she couldn't make it across the line. In fact, she could barely stand up. Faith was frustrated and almost confused about why her slacklining skills didn't translate so high up, but she was determined to try again. Once she got the hang of it, Faith fell in love with the feeling of being high on the line.
I've never highlined before. Can you just tell me what it feels like? What happens? Take me from the first step to the end. But first just take me from what you say to yourself, then you hop on the line and you start walking across, and then what happens.
Faith Dickey:
Absolutely. Most of the time and most highliners wear a climbing harness with a leash that is attached to the highline and follows you as you walk. So before you get on the line, you sit there, you contemplate what you're about to do. Maybe it's a challenge, maybe you're scared, maybe you're scared of dying so you check you're knot over and over and over again. The leash is tied through your harness securely. You always want someone to check it before you get out there. But even so, once you're sitting on that line and you have hundreds or thousands of feet beneath you and your feet are just hanging in space, it's super instinctual to look at that leash and that knot over and over and over again. I mean, I check it five or six times even if I tied it and I'm sure it's good.
I do a lot of techniques to kind of calm my body down involving breathing. But typically your body really wants to hold breath, just kind of stop breathing and create a bunch of tension, which is really counterintuitive to balancing. But it's really interesting to be out there and just be faced with all the voices in your own mind. It's almost like a forced meditative state. You really just want to be focused on the task at hand. But highlining's a slow sport. You're not running across that line. You're in a prolonged state of dealing with whatever's in your head.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay, so first of all, when you get up to wherever this highline is rigged, it could be on a really small spire, which is sketchy enough just standing on.
Faith Dickey:
Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
Then you take a step and you start walking. And for those who've never seen highliners, what are you doing with your arms and hands and your feet while you're doing this?
Faith Dickey:
So most highliners, they scoot out on the line and then they get into a sitting position and then they rock forward and stand up on the line. There's a lot more control and less risk of falling and hitting the rock if you start from a sitting position a bit away from the edge. And once you stand up, it's already a challenge to convince yourself to stand up because sitting is a pretty comfortable place, like, "Oh, I've got control right now and if I stand up, I may lose that control."
So once you stand up, your arms kind of shoot into the air upright. Your knees are slightly bent and your elbows are loose. You don't want to have rigid airplane arms as we call them. You want your arms to be kind of loose so they can sway and help act as counterbalances. So sometimes when I'm walking a highline, I might find my equilibrium just with the slightest move of my pinky. It isn't even always a large movement. Sometimes you can make these micro connections in your posture and that helps maintain balance. What's so cool about it is that the more you highline and slackline, the more you become in tune with what equilibrium feels like. Having every single body part and even your mind in perfect harmony and balance. It's like you become really intimate with equilibrium more so than we do in everyday life just tromping around on our feet.
Shelby Stanger:
I also read that your feet muscles are incredible, which sounds funny, but like-
Faith Dickey:
Is there a like foot fetish website out there about me? Or...
Shelby Stanger:
No. No, no, no, no. It just had you talking about how strong every single little muscle in your feet are.
Faith Dickey:
Yes. True. I would say slacklining develops those muscles a lot, because the line, it's not totally taut. It does move and bend and sway. And so the first adjustments that happen are in your feet. I hope people are picturing these buff feet.
Shelby Stanger:
Like swell feet is not something we've heard before. That's pretty funny.
Faith Dickey:
They look normal. All right?
Shelby Stanger:
So I've seen pictures of you in heels, like high heels going across a line in gorgeous dresses and cowboy boots. Talk to me about all this.
Faith Dickey:
So I think because of wanting to engage with fear in as many different ways as possible, I thought that wearing costumes on highlines would be interesting, right? Like, how can I be scared if I look stupid? And so I was actually the first person to ever walk a highline in high heels. It mostly came as a joke of, "Is this possible? And let's poke fun at stereotypes with this idea of how women are supposed to look." So what would it be like if we dressed we're supposed to, but did this outrageously badass and extreme thing at the same time?
So when you walk with high heels on a highline, it's super hard because the line is only one inch wide, and so you need to get the heel of the high heel in the middle of the highline that you're walking on. So when I've done it, I've pretty much worn stilettos every time. And actually the first time I walked a highline in high heels, the heels were three sizes too big. Some of the other times I've done it, I realized it was the same thing, you're like walking on your tiptoes, but on a highline. So not weighting the heel, just gingerly setting it on the line. It's super hard. You have to have calves of steel. So if I tried to do it right now, it would probably take me a lot of practice because at that time I was just highlining all the time so my legs were ripped, but it's really physically difficult.
Shelby Stanger:
When we come back, Faith talks about what it feels like when she gets to the other side of the line and her experience with free soloing. Faith also shares her insights on addiction, failure, and self-worth.
When professional highliner Faith Dickey is about to walk a line, she often breaks it down into segments, the beginning, middle, and end. You might think that the middle of the line would be the hardest since it's the farthest away from solid ground, but actually the end of the line is often the most difficult. Faith calls it the heartbreak zone. At the end of the line, you're tired and the stakes are higher. If you fall, you have to do the whole line over from the other side. Plus the end of the line usually requires walking uphill, which is harder on your muscles and on your mind. When Faith is crossing a line, it's crucial that she stays in the present moment.
I've heard you say on a film that the first time you highlined and you were in the groove, it was like seeing color for the first time.
Faith Dickey:
I think that's a really good way to put it still. For me, highlining can be different day to day. There could be one day that I can kind of lock into the flow really easily, and other days I find it a lot harder even if it's the same exact line. The experience I always was striving for and still do is this total pure focus where that chatter in my mind, that inner dialogue has just faded into the background or disappeared all together and it's like I become hyper aware of everything around me. It's like I can simultaneously notice the sky, the breeze, the space beneath me, and also what each little muscle in my body feels like, what it feels like for the ball of my foot to roll onto the line as I take a step, what it feels like for my pinky to just shift in space. It's so incredible.
Shelby Stanger:
And you just described the perfect state of flow.
Faith Dickey:
Yes.
Shelby Stanger:
What happens to your adrenals? How do you feel after you've finished one successfully?
Faith Dickey:
Well, that's actually a good point. And I want to stress that part of the objective of highlining is to not be in a constant straight of stress. So you're consistently and repeatedly calming yourself down as you cross the line. And it doesn't mean that stress doesn't arise. So perhaps you start to lose your balance in one moment and kind of have to fight to regain it. That's definitely a moment that my heartbeat will accelerate and I'll feel stressed. But then I consciously tell myself to take deep breaths and slow my body down, slow everything down and regain control. I think fear is kind of a poultry word to describe all the different experiences we have out there. There's of course the primal fear that it says like, "Get your feet back on solid ground. What are you doing, crazy?"
But there's also fears of just not being good enough, self-doubt, fear of what people are thinking, "Oh, I fell. What do they think of me? I'm not as good as I should be. I can't do this. I'm not capable. My legs aren't strong enough. I'm shaking." It's wild where the mind goes. But mantras are super important for me. I've kind of changed mantras over the years, but a lot of times if a line is challenging, I might verbally say, "Breathe. Calm. Breathe. Calm. You've got this. Come on. One step." So I found that talking to myself really helps me get across the line especially in a challenging moment. And then when I step onto the rock on the other side, it's like this huge release of like... I'm glad that's over. And at the same time, that was so incredible and it felt so otherworldly to be in that space, and also just the incredible sensation of pushing yourself past your limits. I mean, there's nothing like it.
Shelby Stanger:
Faith, I'm going to speculate here, but it seems like crossing a line over and over that seems impossible would rewire your brain in a way to have so much more courage and resiliency that you carry that to the rest of your life in a way like you can do anything.
Faith Dickey:
I think you're right. When I'm facing a different challenge in life, for example I'm starting my own business right now, and it can be really daunting to start your own business and to not be sure if it's going to succeed, I regularly tell myself the same things that I tell myself highlining, "You never know if you don't try. If you avoid all risk, you'll never see what you're capable of. One step at a time. Just try. Just try." I think those lessons are so translatable.
From the very beginning of getting into highlining, I think one of the biggest lessons that really stood out to me was that we're often our biggest competitor, you know? It's not usually someone else who's holding us back, it's us holding us back. That doesn't speak to privilege and all these other outside factors. For sure there's so many people who start way farther down on the ladder than others. But if we're just talking about where you're at with a challenge in front of you, I think it is so important to see how you're holding yourself back first and foremost. You can't control every obstacle, but you can control yourself.
Shelby Stanger:
Highlining has changed Faith's life. Not only did it turn into a career that she loves, but the sport has also taught her so much about resilience, mindset and perseverance. In highlining, falling is inevitable, but if you want to improve, you have to get up and try again. What happens when you do fall and how big are these leashes? Like a couple feet?
Faith Dickey:
About three feet long is a kind of traditional length of leash.
Shelby Stanger:
Three feet, yeah.
Faith Dickey:
So by and large, most highliners, myself included, walk with a harness and a leash attached to the line. So the consequences of falling while you're on the highline aren't huge. Generally, bad things don't happen very often. If you fall, you're dangling in space, right? We call it a whipper. So you take this short whipper and you're swinging under the line. Despite it not being a big deal, it's still terrifying. It's very hard to get used to letting go of control and flying through the air like a rag doll and then bouncing and then realizing, "Oh, I'm alive." And actually, taking whippers is something I try to force myself to do regularly because it's really good for my head, because if I never fall, I never see that I'll be safe when I fall. So I think that's a really huge component of highlining, is recognizing that yes, there's risk, but it's a controlled risk.
Now, when things get more hairy in highlining, it's because the consequence of falling off a cliff are huge. So rigging highlines and installing them involves being in environments that aren't always simple and aren't always safe if something does go wrong. I've rigged highlines in the Alps, I've rigged highlines on precipices, on tiny spires, really high off the ground where if you slip, you're going to die.
And then there's free soloing. I think a lot of people know what soloing is these days thanks to Alex Honnold and the movie Free Solo. There are people, myself included, who have soloed highlines before. That is a whole other topic and a whole other game. It's taking everything about highlining that you know how to do and adding an actual risk of death. Most people's reaction to that is, "Are you stupid? Why would you ever do that?" And I totally understand that viewpoint.
For some people, taking that kind of risk is just unacceptable. And my argument was always, "Well, we take a risk every day we get into a car and drive with hundreds or thousands of other cars on the highway that you can't control." For me, it was an exploration of what is my mind stopping me from achieving. If I can walk this highline all day back and forth easily with a harness and a leash, why can't I do it without a harness and a leash? Clearly, I'm capable. Clearly, my mind is strong enough. And so taking that harness off was my way of exploring that space of what mental barriers are holding me back.
Shelby Stanger:
Have you done a lot of solo attempts?
Faith Dickey:
I've probably soloed... Well, I'm still here, so they weren't attempts. They were successes, but-
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah, sorry. Have you done this a lot? Have you soloed a lot?
Faith Dickey:
Yes, I've soloed at least 50 different highlines.
Shelby Stanger:
Wow.
Faith Dickey:
In my 20s, I was so devoted to the sport all I did was travel around and walk highlines. And so it was pretty easy to kind of throw in a solo here and there when I felt inclined. But I should specify because I never pushed myself so hard in soloing that I felt like there was a really big risk of something going wrong. Whereas now my life is much more diverse in the activities I do. And so because I'm not highlining as often, I'm not nearly as comfortable as I was back then. So I don't want to risk my life just to solo.
Shelby Stanger:
I have so many questions about soloing. I couldn't, in good conscious, condone it on this podcast. I don't want anybody to go try it and die.
Faith Dickey:
Agreed. Agreed.
Shelby Stanger:
It is such a high consequence. I've talked to Alex about soloing, and I get, he is cut from a different cloth and you probably are too. And I'm not cut from that cloth, so I just can't comprehend it. It seems like, why won't you just attach a line so that in case you do fall, you're not dead, you're still here?
Faith Dickey:
And most of the time I do. I would like to just share one thought I have about soloing and taking risks like that purely from a scientific standpoint. I've often wondered if we just all release different chemicals, different amounts of chemicals in our brains doing different things, right? I'm kind of driven to go climbing and highlining and try these different activities. And for some people, they get a thrill just riding a bike. And for some reason, my brain might be producing less dopamine when I ride a bike down a hill so I need to push my limits a little more to get that same thrill.
Shelby Stanger:
This is interesting. There is this thing called dopamine addiction.
Faith Dickey:
totally.
Shelby Stanger:
It's really interesting. I've been trying to study it more. I have a lot of friends who chase really extreme activities. And once you do, your body needs that to keep producing dopamine. I'm just curious what your take on it is all.
Faith Dickey:
I actually really love that you brought that up because it's so easy for our culture to glorify these types of activities and kind of raise any athlete on a pedestal as if they're a hero. But there's so much addiction in the world of extreme sports. I often think that I just found highlining instead of drugs. I had a really hard childhood with plenty of big trauma and little trauma, and I didn't know how or where I would get drugs. And so when I found highlining, I just dove in, like I couldn't get enough. I obsessively pursued it. In the process of being a highliner and traveling around, I met quite a few individuals who'd been addicts, heroin addicts when they were younger. And oftentimes, they expressed how they felt, like climbing and highlining saved them. But in a lot of ways, it just gave them a different addiction to focus on.
And don't get me wrong, I think it's a much better choice. About six or seven years ago, I did a ton of work on myself, so I had kind of a relationship fall apart and hit a sort of rock bottom. After spinning a couple years doing some work, I just kind of realized that the desire to be as extreme as I could all the time wasn't really there anymore. It's like I still wanted to do the sport and participate in it, but I was fine taking less risk and it felt healthier and more moderate.
I think what I really want to drive home, and this is of course just my opinion based on my own experience, but it seems to me that part of why people who are prone to addiction can find these sports and get addicted to them is because a lot of us struggle with being moderate. We need to be full on or full off. I think there's so much longevity in being moderate. I have zero regrets about my life path and the achievements I have and the experiences I've had, but I had to take a pretty hard path to learn them. And in the process, I wore all the cartilage out of my knee from standing up on highlines so much and carrying 100 pound backpacks up mountains. And it was because I had no ability to be moderate. It was like, "I want to go rig a highline there. I'm going to do it."
Shelby Stanger:
How has highlining changed your sense of self-esteem, your courage, your outlook?
Faith Dickey:
I think highlining has had a huge hand in shaping who I am. And so I think that's a main reason I say I don't regret any of the choices I've made even if some of them were really hard lessons. During my heyday of highlining, so I spent about six years being the leading woman in the sport of highlining and having multiple world records and several times sharing the world record with men, which was really cool just to be in a sport where we could have an even playing field, I always thought, "I'm separate from these achievements. I'm something else."
But at some point when I started to kind of get burnt out and my knee was really painful, I got knee surgery and I had to basically stop highlining more or less for a while, I was hit with this realization that all of my self-worth and self-value was totally tied up in what I had achieved. And it kind of happened under the radar from myself. I didn't realize I was getting attached to that persona. But once I could no longer highline and climb and be this extreme athlete, I felt absolutely worthless.
Shelby Stanger:
How did you kind of find your self-worth outside of being a highliner?
Faith Dickey:
Well, therapy has been a huge thing for me, and I know not everyone has the resources to receive therapy. But even before I started going to therapy, I think part of it was just a reflection process of how the things I do bring me joy, but they're not who I am. When I started to highline again after I took some time off, I really worked on approaching each highline with the objective of being curious about what it was going to feel like. Trying not to go out there with some preconceived idea of what I could do or what I should do or how good I should be, but just being curious about what it was going to feel like. And I still carry that to this day.
I of course am thrilled when I walk a highline successfully without falling, but I now look at falling as a success because it means I'm pushing myself to my limit. I think so many of us think that falling is this failure and shows that we're not good enough, but actually, if you're falling, it means you're pushing yourself hard enough to fall, and getting back up is the thing you should be proud of, right?
Shelby Stanger:
Faith Dickey, thank you so much for coming on Wild Ideas Worth Living. I love talking with you and hearing about your reflections on highlining and soloing and everything you're doing. For those of you who haven't seen Faith in action, I definitely recommend that you check out a video of her walking a line. Words cannot do the experience justice. She's just so fun to watch. She wears such cool outfits. There's several videos of her on YouTube, and we'll link to one in the show notes. If you want to get in touch with Faith, you can look her up on Instagram, @thefaithdickey, that's T-H-E-F-A-I-T-H-D-I-C-K-E-Y. There you'll find information about the first and largest woman's highline festival in the world that Faith founded and hosts every year in the Czech Republic. Faith is passionate about inspiring, coaching, and supporting more women in highlining, and her festival is a great way to access her knowledge.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producer is Jenny Barber. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow this show, when you rate it, and when you take the time to write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.