Where the Mountain Becomes Water

Vinicunca: A Personal Pilgrimage, A Shared Path

I went to see a mountain of seven colors. I came back with a different way of looking.

In Peru I was taught to recognize mountains as sacred, protective beings, to relate to them from respect, gratitude, and reciprocity. I was told about the apus, and about masculine and feminine mountains. According to that teaching, mountains from which springs of water are born were female.

The image stayed alive in me.

A mountain that carries water in its depths. That lets it well up between the stones, descend its slopes, find a channel. A mountain whose existence continues in the crops, in the animals that drink, in the hands that knead the bread.

Since then, whenever I look at a mountain, I ask myself what is born of it.

I arrived at Vinicunca to celebrate a goal we had worked toward deeply: our graduation in Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

Before that mountain there was another journey. A year of individual, one-on-one work, exploring the unconscious and examining patterns, beliefs, and learned responses. Then, a hundred and thirty intensely demanding hours of group learning, of practice, and of working among ourselves. We had shared discoveries, resistances, and the intimacy of looking at each other where we usually look away.

We planned the trip with Aleph, our teacher. It had been booked and paid for long in advance. There were four of us: Aleph, Silvana, Angélica, and me. Silvana and Angélica had been friends for more than twenty years.

The celebration had a date. My inner world, meanwhile, had begun to shift.

In March of 2024 I went through an especially intense spiritual awakening. I had lived through others before, but that one opened up a process in me that needed time, silence, and integration. The trip was scheduled for late April, barely a month later.

As the date drew near, I got back in touch with them to coordinate our departure.

That's when Angélica's concern surfaced. She felt uneasy about the idea of me going at that particular time: she thought I might need to stay behind at the hotel, that I still needed more introspection, more time to integrate what I had lived through.

Later on she would tell me what she came to understand about that worry. At the time, each of us arrived at the trip with her own outlook, with what she knew of herself and with what she still had left to discover.

We had devoted so many hours to studying how we interpret experience. Now we would travel together, carrying that learning into an encounter with the unforeseeable.

The mountain awaited us with its own language.

The Altitude That Suffocates

"The altitude that suffocates," sings Calle 13 in Latinoamérica.

In Vinicunca, those words enter your lungs.

At more than 5,200 meters above sea level, breathing demands an attention we rarely give it. You inhale. You wait for relief. You inhale again. You feel it isn't enough.

Your heart pounds against your ribs. Your head throbs. Your legs take on an unfamiliar weight. You lift your gaze, gauge what's left, and lower it again: for now, all your willpower fits into the next step. You truly feel you cannot go on.

There is real physical danger at that altitude. The body can reach a limit that demands stopping, receiving help, or descending. Learning to listen to it is also part of the pilgrimage. No summit is worth the life of the one trying to reach it.

I remember the strangeness of being surrounded by so much sky and feeling short of breath. That immensity didn't fit inside my chest.

With every pause, the mountain was stripping something away from me: haste, expectation, the illusion that wanting is always enough. For a few moments, everything I had thought about myself was reduced to the essential: breathing, feeling the ground, recognizing how far I could go.

I thought about birth. About the vulnerability of entering a world whose conditions we don't yet know how to inhabit. About that first breath on which everything that follows depends. There I understood how much of our life rests on silent acts.

Breathing. Drinking. Taking a step.

Staying Close

Angélica panicked. "I'm dying," she repeated between sobs.

Her voice carried the fear of someone who senses their body might fail them. It isn't my place to decide how much of what she was experiencing was exhaustion, altitude, or memory. Her anguish was there, and it deserved to be heard.

Silvana went on ahead. I stayed close.

Between moving forward and staying behind there are small decisions, hard to explain from the outside. My way of accompanying her was to make sure she knew where to find me, so that when she looked up she could recognize a presence.

I often return to that gesture. Sometimes we believe that accompanying someone requires exactly the right words, an answer that puts what hurts into order, a certainty that calms the other person. On that mountain, my presence had something much simpler to offer: I'm still here.

No one could breathe for Angélica. We could listen to her, seek help, share the weight of that moment. The personal pilgrimage includes that possibility: choosing a hand and allowing it to hold us up.

There too I find a form of connection with the Higher Self. In the honesty of acknowledging our fragility. In the capacity to receive care without feeling we've lost our strength.

The Water Among the Stones

Small streams of crystal-clear water ran along the trail. The teaching about feminine mountains came back to me. I watched the water carve its way and thought about the intimacy of its origin: something that had remained inside the earth was finding a way out into the world.

The mountain extended itself into what it gave.

There were also stacked stones, small towers built by hands that were no longer there. I didn't know the intention of whoever had placed them. I regarded them as signs of presence: someone paused in this place, bent down, chose a stone, and sought its balance atop another.

In front of an immense mountain, a person had built something that fit between their hands.

I thought about the traces we leave and the things we need to let go of. Other people's expectations that we end up calling destiny. The fears we learned before we had words to question them. The versions of ourselves that once protected us and that now feel too small.

I also thought about the inherited things that deserve to stay. Strength. Ingenuity. The custom of offering food. Hands that know how to care for others. The ability to laugh even when life becomes difficult.

Emptying the vessel requires delicacy. You have to recognize what fills it, distinguish what nourishes from what weighs it down, make space without scorning your own history. I too was learning to do this.

The Horse

At one stretch of the climb, the horses appeared, along with the local men offering to carry us.

For me, the horse was a help. For Angélica, it represented another fear. A difficult experience from her past had left her with a deep fear of getting on horseback. There she was, facing two difficulties: the effort of continuing on foot and the anguish of trusting an animal she was afraid of.

I decided to get on one. I asked the man leading me to go more slowly, because my friend was coming along behind and I wanted to stay close to her. He explained that he needed to make more trips to earn his living. The time I was asking of him had a cost within his workday.

I paid him double.

That agreement let us move more slowly. I looked back every few meters, searching for Angélica.

I've returned to that memory many times because it holds a simple truth about care: it needs to take shape. It can become time, money, a phone call, a shared journey. Something concrete that makes another person's experience more bearable. My desire to accompany her needed to include the man whose work made it possible, too.

The Shape of Trust

Angélica stopped. She looked at the path. She looked at the horses.

I don't know what conversation she had with herself. There are moments that belong entirely to the one living them, even when we are there to witness them.

She got on.

The fear was still with her. Her hands were trembling. Even so, she accepted that help. In that gesture I saw a form of trust I hadn't, until then, considered deeply enough: allowing part of the path to rest on a strength other than one's own.

We went on together, each on her own horse, the icy wind on our faces.

Today I hold onto that moment with tenderness and with respect for the vulnerability we were moving through. Angélica's decision belongs to her own story.

When we reached the lookout, we got off. Angélica hugged me and cried. I hugged her back.

The distance with which we had begun the trip took on another shape. For a moment, what had happened between us could be said this way, with no explanations, in the space of an embrace.

A Hot Cup at the Top of the World

And then we took in the colors.

Reds, ochres, greens, whites. Mineral bands stretched across the slopes, tones that the light drew close and pushed away again. The earth had visible memory.

I looked at those layers and thought about our own. About everything we carry inside that we don't yet know. About the patience it takes to recognize a beauty that doesn't always appear on the surface.

Then there were the llamas. Decked out in bright colors, some wearing sunglasses, utterly coquettish, posing in the middle of the immensity with a self-assurance that brought my joy back to me.

What a gift to find them there. After the fear and the effort, the world still had this whimsy in store: a llama in dark sunglasses at the top of a sacred mountain.

There was also hot chocolate. Soup. Simple bread that tasted like heaven.

And behind all of that, people. Someone had carried the ingredients up. Someone had prepared the food, set up a stall, begun their workday to welcome those of us who would arrive cold. That experience, which I would live as deeply personal, was being held up by many lives.

The mountain's water could end up in a cup between my hands.

Since then, that image gathers something sacred for me: the journey that connects a spring, a day's work, and a stranger's relief.

What Was Able to Open

Later on, Angélica apologized to me for not having wanted me to come. Her honesty moved me.

She explained that she had recognized something in herself: the need to withdraw, to look inward and give herself time, was hers. By worrying about whether I was ready for the trip, she had placed onto me something she hadn't yet managed to recognize as her own.

It was she who put words to that discovery. She realized she was looking outward for what she needed to attend to within.

I thought about the mirrors we can be for one another. After so much shared learning, life was inviting us to recognize our own reflections. Angélica was able to look at hers and share it with me. I was able to listen to her.

I felt gratitude for what we had been able to share. There was something beautiful in being able to speak from a different place than the one we occupied when the trip began. That encounter left me with the sense that something between us was being born.

I saw her fear. I witnessed her decision. I received her embrace.

And something changed in me too. I learned that we can matter in someone's story without knowing all of it. That being close requires respecting what we will never fully be able to interpret. That the meaning of an experience can keep revealing itself long after we've returned home.

Even today, that mountain still teaches me.

What Is Born From Us

In my spiritual reading, the seven colors became an image of integration. They reminded me of the seven chakras, the generations that came before us, the directions in which we seek orientation. This is how the colors of that mountain gradually took shape within me.

I thought about the center. That place from which we can recognize what we feel, what we need, what we wish to keep, and what we're ready to let go of. Sometimes, returning to that center lets us move forward. Other times it lets us stop without shame. Ask for help. Change direction. Rest.

Trust in the divine has become, for me, something closer to the body, more attentive to life. I find it in the breath I listen to, in the limit I respect, in the care I offer and the care I allow myself to receive.

I went to Vinicunca looking for colors and came back thinking about water. About what a mountain keeps and what it gives. About how something born in its depths can travel so far and nourish lives that will never see its summit.

I wonder whether we too can do that with what we live through. Let an experience find its channel. Let understanding become patience. Let pain that has been worked through become care. Let what we discover in our solitude reach others as a gentle presence.

Perhaps this is how a personal pilgrimage takes part in collective transformation: through what we make possible afterward, in everyday life, with what we've learned.

One person adjusts her pace. Another accepts help. Someone prepares food. A friendship finds space to open. And what seemed to end in us continues on.

We too can be a channel. We draw near the source, we receive, we let something reach us deeply. And what finds space within us can continue its journey toward others.

Connection becomes presence. Understanding becomes patience. Love received finds hands to care with.

I think of the mountain that holds water in its depths and gives it away. Of the vessel that needs to open in order to receive and allow itself to be filled. We too need to let ourselves be nourished. There is a generosity that is born from that fullness: something fills us to overflowing and finds a way to continue on.

We give from what we've been able to receive, from what we allow to transform us. Each of us offers it a different shape: a word, a meal, a shared silence, the willingness to stay close.

The mountain stays in its place. Its water keeps traveling.

I too would like something of what I lived there to keep finding someone to give a drink to.

Myriam V.