Too Cool

Another Kircher Society gem, this one about a shepherd who walked from Paris to Moscow on stilts in 1891. It's not the walking 1800 miles in two months on five-foot stilts I find interesting, it's the fact that he had grown up doing that to keep better track of his sheep, and to be able to get through swamps and tall grass. It's kind of ingenious, and check out the skills these French stilt-walking shepherds had:

The Tchangue knows very well how to preserve his equilibrium; he walks with great strides, stands upright, runs with agility, or executes a few feats of true acrobatism, such as picking up a pebble from the ground, plucking a flower, simulating a fall and quickly rising, running on one foot, etc.

Sounds like the kind of fun you'd have if you didn't know what a skateboard was. But still cool as hell. I'd love to see the hotshot stilt kid bust some moves, wouldn't you? The article says the still do stilt dancing today (another thing I'd like to see) but didn't say anything about cross-country stilting.