God Paints With Minerals
The word “breathtaking” has often been used to describe the Andes mountain chain that runs the full length of the Pacific coast of South America. It’s the southern version of the North American Rockies, and it truly is an amazing sight to see.
I know because I once had a chance to fly from Argentina to Chile, directly over the chain, and look down on the pristine mountain peaks from above—easily one of the greatest memories of my life.
Pretty Little Cousin
But there is a wonderful lower mountain that is part of the larger chain as it passes through Peru that is impressive in its own right. It’s not the sharp white crested granite of the Chilean Andes, but a colorful cousin that flows easily off the eastern side of the larger mountain chain and challenges its more famous relative for the title of Miss Geological Peru.
Its local name is Vinicunca, and it can be found about sixty miles north of the City of Cusco. It is more commonly known as the Mountain of the Seven Colors. Whoever dreamed up the name didn’t have a very hard job! It’s a panoply of radiant color. (Notice the size of the people on the ridgeline in the center.)
You can’t get to the mountain directly by any form of transportation other than alpaca! It’s a nationally protected site and currently has no direct roads. You have to hoof it.
That may be because the locals didn’t even know it existed until about 40 years ago when the ice caps covering the mountain finally melted (the only positive evidence I’ve ever seen of “global warming”) and revealed this amazing terrain. It’s also 17,000 feet above sea level where the air is rather thin, so you have to be in pretty good shape to go there.
Incan Cusco
The City of Cusco is nestled in a valley to the south that was once known as the Sacred Valley to the Inca Indians. In fact, Cusco was the capital of the Incan Empire for five hundred years before the Spanish Conquest, and to this day, the dress of its indigenous people is as colorful as the Vinicunca mountain.
[Helpful Travel Advisory: Please do not—I repeat—do not refer to those llamas in the picture above as alpacas. They get very offended by being mistaken for their less sophisticated family members and may spit at you. Fair warning.] (Below: the City of Cusco.)
Minerals as Art
Truly, only God can make a mountain like that. He seems to paint with minerals because each of those colors bears the chemical makeup of different organic substances that cause the color.
Millions of years ago there must have been some kind of volcanic eruption or clashing of tectonic plates that pushed all those mineral deposits to the surface, and when everything finally settled into place, voilá, the Rainbow Mountain emerged. Michelangelo eat your heart out.
Here is the breakdown of the mineral content (excerpted from Wikipedia):
Pink – red clay, mud, and sand;
White (or off white) – quartzose and sandstone rich in calcium carbonate;
Red – claystones (iron);
Green – phyllites and clays rich in ferro magnesian;
Earthy brown –- fanglomerate composed of rock with magnesium;
Mustard yellow – calcareous sandstones rich in sulphurous minerals.
Okay, like you, I only count six colors. I’m told that the discrepancy is due to the Common Core Math they taught in the Incan school system at the time. Maybe they were counting the blue sky too. Anyway…
But as you can see, the minerals give a kind of ethereal aura to the scene, almost as if a divine Hand deliberately painted an earthy watercolor picture that could be reproduced by human artists whenever God chose to reveal His tableau.
Book of Nature
The Fathers of the Church used to say that God reveals Himself in two books: the book of Scripture and the book of Nature. Surely, Nature’s book is not so much a collection of written pages but a picture book full of wonderful divine art.
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Photo Credits, via Wikimedia Commons: Mountain Ridge (Michaellbrawn); Cusco (Martin St-Amant); Inca women (Sarov702 and Nikon D3000); Andes (Christopher Walker); Arcoiris (Jhonatan David Reategui Sifuentes). Map Wikipedia.
