Me Working
My name is Tim and recently I had the opportunity to work with Rafe Kelley and Erwan Le Corre in France, on the island of Corsica. For those of you who don’t know me, I’ve been pointing my video camera at parkour practitioners for the last couple years mostly in Portland, where I live, but occasionally in Washington as well (here are a few I’ve shot). This incredible trip came about because Erwan came to Washington to teach about his method of training called MovNat. I found his concepts interesting, so I went and shot the two day clinic, and after than Erwan asked if I wished to join him in Corsica to shoot a more substantial piece. Unfortunately for the moment I cannot really share much of the work I did in Corsica because the MovNat site is still being prepared. But even so I hope some of this will be inspiring to you, to again reconsider your surroundings either urban or rural, and realize there is always, always somewhere to train.
For the first week of the trip, Rafe was there, working with Erwan on all the MovNat texts and also demonstrating various “combos” by himself and also doing collaborative tasks with Erwan. Combos seem like a really effective way to train your body in a number of ways very quickly and is one of the aspects of this type of physical training that I found most interesting.
We started shooting at a junkyard kind of place, using cinderblocks, truck wheels, and assorted other stuff laying around to create various obstacles, strengthening, and coordination exercises.
Aside from building and shooting stuff there, we also went around to a nice beach for some sparring and some swimming and some coordination exercises. The landscape in Corsica is really amazing and the water is very blue. The thing that makes the landscape so interesting is that Corsica is essentially a big rock sticking out of the Mediterranean Sea so there are amazing rock formations and boulders, steep rivers and gorges everywhere. Basically the first week of my trip consisted of going to various amazing places and setting up shots with Rafe and Erwan. Along the way we discovered some old factories that also provided interesting places to train at.
Rafe and Erwan
Building stuff
Rafe
Beach
Rafe climbing
Training river
Rafe in Piana
Crazy rocks
Rafe in a rock
Old factory
Running from the sky fire
Rafe jumping
Rafe lifting
After a week Rafe and Erwan both had to go to London for parkour related things, while I stayed in Corsica by myself and backpacked for a week on a really cool trail called the GR20 which is considered to be one of the more difficult backpacking trails in Europe. I didn’t get to do the whole thing because I didn’t have enough days, but I did manage to climb to Mount Cinto, Corsica’s highest point. The backpacking is very different from what I’m used to, there are “refuges” along the route, with beds, showers, food, heat, lights, etc. Nothing like just wandering off into the mountains with a tent, which is what I usually do. While I liked the refuges enough, I really missed the solitude, and because its such a famous trail there were always people nearby. But I really can’t complain. The trail was really fun, you either climb straight up or straight down, so you better have good knees and a light pack. I sew most of my own backpacking stuff and its really super light and I felt pretty bad for the people who almost collapsed at the end of every day with bloody feet and angry shoulders and backs. And really I think the parkour training that I’ve done really helps my backpacking both for strength and balance.
GR20 trail
GR20 trail
GR20 just like PNW
Mount Cinto trail
Mount Cinto summit
After some hitchhiking and a funny train ride, I met back up with Erwan and we got back to work. While in London he had a revelation about what he wanted to do with the project, so off we went. Again this really consisted of driving or walking around looking for really great spots to shoot really cool stuff. In the end, after three more weeks of traveling, we had crisscrossed the island at least a couple times, gone to the North, South, East, West, everywhere, on some scary roads, on some nice beaches, and we got some great shots. Here are some more pictures which can describe the trip better than I can, since most of the time I was left speechless by my surroundings. And actually I didn’t take that many pictures from this part of the trip because we were shooting a lot.
Erwan in a tree
Camping
Erwan on cliffs
Erwan by river
Sunset
Stormy sea
So that’s how I spent five weeks in Corsica. If you aren’t totally tired of looking at pictures you may also look at my
personal photo pages. I cannot say for sure when the videos I shot will be available for viewing, but hopefully it is not too far away. The information he has to share with the world is really deep and fascinating, and it was really great to be a part of something that has so much potential to help people become better physically and mentally.
Thanks for reading.
Tags: france, London, media, movnat, ORPK, traveling
This entry was posted
on Sunday, November 9th, 2008 at 12:54 am and is filed under From the Community.
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