Early Life
Nik Wallenda was born in Sarasota, Florida, on January 24, 1979, to Delilah Wallenda and Terry Troffer. At age two, his parents bought him a swing set. Before Troffer had even finished assembling it, Wallenda climbed up to the crossbar and did a somersault. "And he did it perfectly," Troffer recalls. "I didn't teach him that." Around the same time, he began performing with his family in their circus act. Wallenda's first public performance, dressed as a clown, was at SeaWorld San Diego in 1981. He began to play on the wire at age two, walking back and forth while holding his mother's hand. At age four, he starting walking the wire on his own, learning primarily from his father. As a child, he would play on his parent's practice wire with his older sister Lijana, two feet (0.6 m) off the ground. Wallenda's parents would throw objects at him as he practiced, and even shot him with a BB gun, to train him to deal with distractions. At age six, he first visited Niagara Falls and immediately decided that one day he wanted to walk a tightrope across it. He spent most of his youth on the road, living in a mobile home as his parents performed across America. However, Wallenda says there was never any family pressure to become a circus performer.
As Wallenda grew, he transitioned from being a clown to juggling to a dog act. In 1991, at age 12, he told a reporter he was not interested in becoming a high-wire artist when he grew up. "It's just not worth it," he explained. "We're risking our lives out there. We could die." Instead, he said, he dreamed of being a pilot. Soon after, Wallenda made his professional tightrope walking debut at age 13. When he graduated high school, his parents encouraged him to go to college and explore his options. With live circus losing popularity, becoming a performer did not seem like a viable career path. Delilah Wallenda wrote a book, The Last of the Wallendas, convinced that the family legacy would end with her generation.
Wallenda briefly considered becoming a doctor, and was accepted into college. However, his plans changed in 1998. At age 19, he participated in a re-creation of Karl Wallenda's seven-person pyramid on the high-wire in Detroit, Michigan, alongside his father, mother, and other family members. Afterwards, he decided to make a career of it. "I knew then what I was born to do," he later said. "We were on every TV show around the world and I said, 'if there is this much attention on what I do, then I need to carry on this legacy'". He saw there was still interest in the Wallenda name. "There was definitely a future" for the Wallendas, he later recalled. " is not dying, it's just changing."
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