What a journey — in the metaphysical sense! Experiencing life in the mountains was a moving experience. Not just the trekking to reach different points, but being able to test my own existence. During the ascents, when I stepped on a rock, I felt pushed upward and forward, but when I stepped on the earth, it seemed to take hold of me, drawing me toward it.
This feeling of reaching unimagined heights — not even fantasized about — of doing things outside the world I had planned for myself, gave me the experience of overcoming my own limits.
What did my body teach me there? That whatever I can do with it, gets done. That if I don't get in my own way from within, my body — this being that I am — carries through with what it set out to do.
Why a metaphysical experience? Because when I reached the crater of the Copahue volcano, the image was surreal, straight out of science fiction. Inside that thick lagoon, somewhere between greenish and silvery mud, bubbling from the intense heat — there, Life.
That magical space wrapped in sulfurous vapors made it hard for us to breathe. It was the unmistakable manifestation of the earth's own activity. With an unquestionable hierarchy: when it unfolds, we feel vulnerable — as we truly are.
From the vantage point we had, the wall in front of us was a glacier. So, at that moment, I told myself: "I'm going to try to hold on to this moment, this is unique and it overwhelms me." And so I did. I kept it inside me like a treasure, like the chance to have lived through this metaphysical experience — almost mythical and mystical at the same time.
I don't take photographs, because I prefer to reach for words — the ones that name me and that I give a name to. That letter that is my innermost fiber, but that also wants to rise to the surface; like the vallesneria plant, which emerges from beneath the water and smiles at the sun.
Did we have to climb so high, too, in order to go so deep? Was it three thousand meters inward? That layered complexity, folded over so many times... was it really that deep? Just as depth carries me upward, clearly that flight comes from a strong root. Here, the mountain and the tree meet — both so majestic. Witnesses.
And surrounding it all, silence. That telling silence, revealing of a profound inner shock.
To give the word back its noble etymology. That coinciding movement between the inside and the outside. The sublime exteriority and the deep inner upheaval.
