The ability to describe this place, the Atacama Desert, depends on our sensitivity to nature. Even the name associates it with the void, with nothingness. Deserted. Uninhabited, desolate.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

There’s a deep-rooted belief that “healthy” ecosystems, or at least diverse and important ones, are “green.” Deserts aren’t very green. They can be white, beige, brown, black, blue. Any green isn’t necessarily due to plants, but to the minerals found in rock. Copper oxide is green. Bones can turn green in proximity to a foundry.

We climb countless slopes, on foot or by bike. We sprint downhill, trying not to fall. Mountains are our legs on earth. They lift us up and drop us down. We grow with them; they fill us with geologic energy and grant us the pleasure of walking their surfaces, millions of years old. They achieved the encounter of different cultures, shedding visual and material traces of human synchrony in the form of geoglyphs, cave paintings and other relics.