Walking with Autism
Prequel
My name is Roberto Carnevali. I am a sportsman and mountain enthusiast. Of challenges to myself between races, hikes and trails I have launched and collected many.
23 years ago I was offered one with my wife Stefania that we did not expect: our first child was born. Manu was born as an extreme premature three and a half months early, and we spent the first few years of his life with real worries that at any moment his already precarious health would deteriorate. Instead, all in all we are lucky and the most serious problems seem averted, but then around age 7 we are faced with another challenge. He is diagnosed with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder. We get help and try our best, my wife studies everything she can find on the subject and devotes all her time to Manu, and I try to help and understand. But it really is an unexplored universe that Manu has, and we soon realize how difficult it is to understand each other: we proceed by trial and error on various fronts.
A different approach
This premise was important because it takes us back 6 years ago when I decide to try to get Manu involved in hiking, just the two of us. The idea is for two of us to experience what I love to do to find myself and feel good: to spend a solitary day to toil in the mountains.
Apparently the idea is a bit crazy: Manu does not like to toil, hates to get dirty, has no idea what sport is and spends his days in front of the PC. Unexpectedly, he accepts the invitation to try a day in the mountains with me on one condition: he will handle the music in the car on the way there and back (he is a big music fan). We try it and the first attempt has a good response, he comes home tired but serene and relaxed.
So we get into the habit of systematically organizing on weekends a day for us, where we go for a day hike in the mountains, often in the Apennines of Modena or Reggio Emilia, which are the mountains closest to us. Gradually I propose longer routes, with greater elevation gains, more challenging. Manu follows me and gets hooked on these wild days: he starts noticing the landscape around him, he points to a goal to reach, he starts listening to his body. All of these things take for granted for many of us, but not for those like him who have a particular sensibility different from ours.
Thanks to a Garmin Fenix 5x plus that I use and a Garmin Fenix 2 that I passed on to my son, we orient ourselves on the trails, find the trail, check the measurable parameters of our adventures.
6 years later this dedicating a day in the mountains to each other continues to be a challenge that we share throughout the beautiful season, from spring to fall.
There are now indeed many mountains that we have climbed together sharing this challenge. What we are really going to explore is what is inside of us, through sport and physical achievement. This exploration has brought us into a closer relationship, built a bridge, identified a new way to generate empathy between us.
Why try ?
And why not? When you can't communicate with someone either you give up or you look for new ways. I felt the need to try to establish a communication plan with Manu with a different approach from those usually taken.
This absolutely empirical approach led both of us to move into a space outside our comfort zone. Manu instead of in front of the pc was on a path in the mountains under the sun and fatigue. I was in an all-too-familiar place, but in conditions completely disrupted from what I usually sought it for. This being both "strangers" in the same situation forced each of us to sharpen our senses and be much more attentive to the other. It would all be almost taken for granted if one did not take into account that talking about empathy and attentiveness toward the other when an autism spectrum disorder is involved is almost impossible.
And instead, many important steps toward each other can be taken. Through sport, shared fatigue, the satisfaction of the goal reached, or in managing a rocky return after losing the trail a new and deeper way of getting to know each other can be built.
Unforeseen events are the order of the day during a mountain hike, I would almost say the norm. But for a person with autism, it is very complex to have to deal with even the slightest change in daily planning. Yet this common effort of trying to understand each other, of caring for the other, has led to being able to reduce even the most unwanted unexpected to a certain normality.
This experimentation that we carry out together through physical activity in these years, but not only, also and perhaps above all to the mental experimentation of wanting to go beyond one's limits has brought great results, and others I count will bring in the near future.
It is certainly a significant and original experience that we wish to share in order to make it known to as many people as possible. The first recipients could be all relatives or people who are otherwise dealing with people with an autism spectrum disorder. It is important to let people know that a bridge can also be built from sports, from physical activity done in nature. But it is not only an approach that can be used in these contexts, it works much more generally than the specificity of our story.
We plan in the near future to produce a publication in which starting from our two very different personal stories, we tell how it was possible to overcome so many barriers, so many misunderstandings. How caring for each other, caring for each other, relying on each other, and wanting to go beyond our initial limitations led us to a higher level of mutual understanding.
