I have written numerous times in the past (e.g. here and here and here) about my love for solo walking. On this post I want to speak about how internal dialogue is a key part of such solo walks. This is in fact one of the aspects of walking alone that I cherish the most.

Here’s a picture: Walking alone in a exposed ridge, the wind being the only sound in your head, your mind soaking in the external silence while internally you are engaging in endless conversations with imaginary interlocutors.

Do you get it?

Some people may find it strange – or I guess even sad. Truth is that I have been practicing these internal dialogues for so long that I cannot say for sure if it is a weird thing or not. I had many a great humbling conversations with imaginary friends. I have won countless arguments against imaginary adversaries. And it had always been a part of me.

I guess all this sounds a bit like that other thing I have seen on the internet:

A spin-off of engaging in internal dialogue, is to daydream of being someone else. This can vary from simply imagining that I am a different version of me to roleplaying that I am somebody (or something) completely different. Funilly this is a habit I share with D. She calls it the “Klondike” habit in reference to her childhood daydreaming rituals when she used to walk alone and imagine she was a gold miner in Jack London’s classic novel White Fang in Alaskan Gold Rush of the 1890’s. My daydreaming is usually less elaborate in narrative depth but equally engaging. One of my favourite daydreams has always been walking in the mountain accompanied by my “young child” (most often “my son”) teaching him the love for the open skies, the weathered rocks, the forests and the creatures of the earth.

Strangely I had such daydreams long before the thought of actually having children first crossed my mind.

And then, after all these years, M came in our life and the potential of turning my daydreams into actual real life conversations entered the realm of possibility.

M just turned two, so he is still young for such endeavours. Sometimes he joins me in my mountain walks (by means of a baby-carrying backpack) but we still have some time ahead us before we can walk and talk as per my daydreams.

So I mostly remain alone in these solo mountain walks but the potential and the dynamic have unmistakably changed. Now my daydreaming spells almost invariable include M as my interlocutor. I imagine showing him the jagged / grooved limestone as I walk the top of Arma. We pass by the strange grooves in the earth and I am asking him to imagine what might have caused them. Was it prehistoric earthquakes? Was it some monsters from the Age of Myth plowing the earth with their flaming swords? Or maybe was it the slow obliterating movement of glaciers gone by since the last Ice Age?

While engaging in dialogue my mind races fast and I am almost intoxicating by the opportunities arising in front of me. To talk with my son about the earth and the stars, about science and philosophy and history and all knowledge known to man. It is simply too exiting.

But then, as these thoughts occur, I almost immediately take steps to restrain myself. I feel that I am struggling with this frivolous extra-ambitious daydreaming. That all these dreams are nothing more than an unfair burden of parental expectations, a weight ready to be bestowed on M’s unsuspecting childish shoulders. As much as I dream of climbing and walking and talking in his company, I have made a commitment that I keep repeating every time my daydreams become too elaborate.

And that is that I will not bestow my dreams, my wishes and my expectations on my son.

For all I can predict, M might just be interested in football, celebrities and reality shows.

And no matter how much of a downer this might sound, it is in fact…just fine.

G.