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His toughest walk By JOHN DARLING for the Mail Tribune ROGUE RIVER - Karl Winn was doing what he did almost every day for 50 years, walking a tight wire for a circus crowd. He was considered the best, a master aerialist, descended from generations of German high-wire artists. But this time, something went wrong. The cable high above an ice rink in a small town outside Vancouver, British Columbia, had not been secured by enough guy wires. When he did a leap to reverse direction, the wire began oscillating, wider and wider. Winn knew he couldn't hold on. He had the presence of mind to toss his steel balance pole to the ground, where none of the audience would be hit. Then, as he fell, he grabbed for the wire but caught it only with his fingertips. He plummeted 30 feet, about three stories, onto the ice. A friend on the ground partially blocked his fall, saving him from certain death, but Winn suffered fractured neck vertebrae, multiple broken bones in both arms and legs, a paralyzed larynx and damaged internal organs. Lynda Winn, his wife of 10 months, usually checked everything for safety, but this time she had arrived shortly after the fall. Doctors told her that Karl, then 53, likely would not live and if he did, he would be paralyzed, living as "a vegetable." But Lynda saw both his legs kick and thought differently. Karl lay in a coma for six weeks. Lynda became his nurse, a job she would carry out for five years. "Where did my power come from? My wife," said Karl, now 58. "When I was in the coma, I heard her say: 'You've been in a terrible accident, but you're going to be all right.' As I healed, I said to myself, that woman has done so much for me and I've got to show her I can get through this." Karl underwent 24 surgeries, including five to uncross his eyes. He was put in long morphine comas so he couldn't complicate things by moving his neck and inducing paralysis. His body was festooned with tubes and bags. "It wasn't fun," said Lynda, 47, "not by any means. It's real hard to see someone you love get hurt like this. I sure learned the difficulties faced by caretakers of invalids, but invalids aren't getting better. Karl was. It was hard a lot of days, like when he'd say he wasn't getting any better. But I could see he was." Karl, back home under the care of Providence Medford Medical Center, stunned doctors by climbing out of his wheelchair four months after the fall and taking his first steps on a walker. One year after the fall, he created more amazement from onlookers than he ever did on the tightrope - he walked unaided. Soon, Karl pulled off the long walk - 120 yards to the end of the driveway. Now, five years after the accident, he can walk as far as two miles. He's permanently short of breath and can swallow food only by a special gulping technique he's perfected. His voice is hoarse but understandable. But his aerialist life is now something only remembered on videotape, such as his high-wire motorcycle act in the 1989 Rose Parade. "I was considered the best. If it could be done, I could do it. I've walked from the ground all the way up a wire to a tall church steeple - a 30-degree slope. I walked across the Rogue for the Boatnik Festival. I've walked as high as 140 feet (about 14 stories), and all this was without a net. You only use a net if it's about 10 feet under you." Karl grew up in a family of aerialists in Germany. He came to America in 1958, moving to Medford in 1970 and to Rogue River in 1992. A man of many interests, Karl years ago learned to play accordion and piano. He volunteered as a math mentor at Oak Grove Elementary School in Medford. His love of heights took him into flying and he eventually flew for Air Oregon. But his main passion was life on the high wire. "It was a great life. What makes it special is that everyone wants to do it, but of course they can't. They always asked me what I thought about up there on the wire. I said, well, I just go into this place where I have discussions with God. I'm not a religious fanatic or anything, but up there, it was just the good Lord and me." Early in the depths of his healing journey, Karl said there were times when he didn't want to live. His brothers, also aerialists, told him they couldn't go on if it happened to them. "I know it was Lynda. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for her. She bathed me and fed me and made me go on. People in that situation - if they don't have someone there for them with that incredible kind of love - they don't live. "I've reached the point where I know I'm not going to get any better. I can't even stand on a chair. I can get only about half the air I really need. I've lost my sense of smell and taste, but," he gazes at the Rogue flowing past the Winn backyard, "I still have my sense of humor. And I have Lynda." John Darling is a free-lance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at [email protected] . Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.