The Hills are Alive

I took Mago for a hike up to the mouth of a canyon with surrounding high, spectacular, otherworldly surreal cliff walls early yesterday morning. On the way back down the canyon mouth as he heard some echoes in the canyon I realized I could show him how to echo his voice through the canyon walls – so I bellowed some two-tones and shouted “Echo!” etc., all of which we could hear bouncing back this way and up the other way, back and forth along canyon walls, quite loudly and clearly (especially lower pitches). I explained how the mountain bounces the sound back, and I think I may have said something to the effect that the mountain “says” the same thing back – an idea Mago picked up on and elaborated on, as it implies the mountain has a voice, and things that give you a voice.. He tried making an echo himself, and got it to work sometimes, after which he’d exclaim:

“I made the Daddy Mountain talk!”

He spoke of trying to get the Mommy Mountain to talk, too – which I explained we couldn’t make happen without Mommy here.

I realized we’d taken a long detour that had to be longer, as I had left the stroller at one fork of the path and accidentally came down another – and had to lead Mago through so many brambles and trees to get back to it – through which he made exaggerated imitations of my huffing and puffing. Getting the stroller again and traveling back down further, Mago tried to make an echo with the canyon walls increasingly out of range for it, and my explanations that they were too far away didn’t deter him. That same day in the evening I took him outside to look at the magnificent cliff wall facade (in magnificent yellow and blue-gray light/dark contrasts from light coming across the other end of the valley), he bellowed at it – mistaking echoes off nearby houses for the mountain’s speaking back – and wouldn’t be deterred that this was no mountain echo – again exclaiming he’d made the Daddy Mountain talk.