MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Summer 2020

CollingwoodDowntown.com Welcome back to Collingwood’s Downtown this summer! Our businesses are working hard to ensure you feel comfortable and safe shopping downtown. So look no further, Collingwood Downtown has everything you need. Take a stroll, book private shopping hours or check out www.collingwoodcommons.com for pre-orders and delivery options. The shops are full of beautiful summer fashion and home décor. The patios are open and your favourite ‘outdoor grocery store’ – the Collingwood Downtown Farmers’ Market is open every Saturday morning at the corner of Second and Pine Streets. Enjoy the finer things in life all summer long – the best in local art, boutique shopping, music and culinary creativity. Sunny days are back in all their glory in Downtown Collingwood! It’s all waiting for you! BACKYARD words :: Ned Morgan With much of the world isolating in place, your back yard—if you’re lucky enough to have one—may be the only guaranteed park and playground. During the pandemic, your fitness regime has probably taken some kind of hit. Making the best of any available outdoor space, even if it’s limited in size, is more crucial than ever. So how should you do that? You should slackline. A slackline is a long length of flat, tightly woven webbing, on average from two to five centimetres wide. It has a certain amount of give or slackness when you step on it but will bounce back taut, provided the tension is right. You string it between two mature trees (all quality slackline kits come with protective felt or other material to stuff between the sling and the tree) or other sturdy anchor points. After tightening the line by hand with a ratchet-tensioner, you walk barefoot along it. Many kits include an optional ‘helpline’ above the main line to avoid falls while finding your form and balance. Some prefer a helpline and work it into their routine for an upper-body workout. Typically a slackline will lie only a few feet off the ground, so a fall would probably not result in serious injury—but until you have a lot of practice, a helpline is recommended. Before the pandemic I took a slackline kit to my wife’s family cottage. My cousins, two boys aged 8 and 10, rocked the line for hours. They took turns doing chin-ups on the help-line, pleased that they could beat their novice-slacker father at this. I saw first-hand that reasonably athletic kids will take to a slackline rapidly—no, instantaneously. And stay with THE NECESSITY OF SLACKLINING