Spanish version / versión en español
Mountains are the backbones of the Earth. They have participated in the formation of the planet for eons and stood witness to permanent climate change and five mass extinctions. Mountains host life and maintain a steady state for their ecosystems. When some numbers are out of balance, mountains manifest events to check the balance. In the mountain ecosystem, life regenerates at a constant pace. All beings dance with the rhythm of the seasons, including the Indigenous communities whose lives are deeply embedded within: seeding, planting, harvesting, and recuperating. The cycle of life coincides with the choreography of the environment.
What is the ecological, spiritual, and cultural implication of mountains in our modern society?
What wisdom have mountains tried to share with us (even if we’ve failed to listen)? What insights and guidance do mountains generously offer us in our effort to move towards a thriving, life-celebrating, post-growth future? What could educators do to facilitate this new form of unlearning and re-learning?
This series of conversations started with two mountain lovers and educators living in separate mountainous cultures, yet sharing the same passion and curiosity for their beloved mountains.
Andre is from the Ecuadorian Andean Mountain Range; and Xinlin is from the Himalaya-Hengduan Mountain Range. Almost instantly they connected by grappling with the same ideas of developing a pedagogy of mountain teaching and learning. Their connection felt like meeting on an unusual hiking trail or finding a companion on a kora (a pilgrimage in the Tibetan cultural language).
Here is their conversation:
Invitation to dialogue with the beyond-human world
Andre: The mountains, one of the great teachers of the world, encompass so much territory between their slopes. Each territory near them has generated a link, a relationship, an interaction. Nature enters conversation with the non-human, even if unconsciously. Within the anthropocentric vision of the construction of modernity within a capitalist, patriarchal, Eurocentric social system, which puts the human being at the center of life, nature is ‘other’, different, often goes unnoticed or taken into account as one, essentialized within the conception of non-human. Conversely, in the mountain territories, each learning feeds the way we understand the world.
Populations that live near mountains have a lot to share about their bond with these beings of the Earth. In the Andean worldview, the Apus, or mountain spirits, accompany people’s lives and are guardians and protectors of the territory. From the Western perspective, mountains are territories of conquest, patriotism, and bond with a Catholic God in the heights. Is there only one story about the mountains? Is there only one way to approach them? Is there a way to feel them?
The role of the Qhapaq Ñan and Apus in the Expansion of The Tawantinsuyu. Christian Vitry, 2017.
Xinlin: The Himalayan culture also sees mountains as spiritual beings. Each mountain has a name, a character, and a unique temper.
Together with surrounding mountains, they form mountain families with epic stories. This is the cosmology of the people living there for generations. People refer to each other as someone from this or that mountain. Mountains are a landmark for human identity as much as for the Earth’s surface. This belief is still very present today.
In addition to the famous eight sacred mountain systems, each region has its own regional sacred mountains. In this sacred mountain system, from daily life to the spiritual world, all human wishes have a mountain god to appeal to. Humans are in constant dialogue (and sometimes negotiation) with the beyond-human world.
An Gaylrong elder prepares for a traditional four-mountain sur offering, part of the orientation program in the mountain school at the Yunhe Centre. Xinlin Song, 2023.
What our mountain teachers have taught us
Andre: On my personal path, the mountains are great teachers of humility, wisdom, rhythm, and discipline. Visiting them increasingly brings a deep resonance to the life I lead. As I go up, I leave behind elements of my head and worries. People who visit mountains and put their bodies in natural spaces are constantly exposed to ‘undressing’ their heads from the issues that fill them. As we climb, we leave our worries behind, we concentrate on the body, on the lungs, on breathing, on letting go. The thoughts that remain are the ones that weigh the most. Sometimes, you must organize your internal world to visit the mountains. When has education taught us that we must organize the internal world? That for something to be sustainable, it has to be fun? It imposes a response on us, a way of labeling, of naming, and of relating. It has imposed visions based on reason. What is beyond reason?
On Cayambe summit 5790m, over the clouds, feeling the first rays of the sun. Andre González Andino, 2021.
Xinlin: I resonate with your point. When I’m there, my commutes up and down the mountain are mostly on foot. Hiking is a daily reality, not for recreation or exercise, but to get somewhere. When I walked the trails, I couldn’t think of many other issues other than concentrating on my footsteps, not falling or being attacked by a nettle’s prickly leaves, or the cow dung. These walks offer precious moments as moving meditations, and they are somehow effortless. In your words, I can see the mountain teacher is able to make us organize our internal world in an elegant way.
One other thing I learned from the mountain community is their concept of ‘convenience.’ In our village, cows won’t be killed or sold, and they are free to roam around. This caused a potential problem: they could walk into the cornfield and chew on the corn plants. Over the years, villagers have set up iron fences along the intertwined road. The locals would use a wooden ladder next to the fence. Modern design puts humans at the center, and all invention is geared towards saving time and energy for the ‘masters’. Yet the wooden ladder and the iron fences suggest something else: this invention deliberately gives some level of inconvenience to people in order to reach a balance with the natural world. Another lesson to be learned from our mountain teacher: sometimes, we need more wisdom for negotiation rather than tactics for control.
The ladders — formally made of wood and recent years upgraded into steel.— are common on village roads; next to them are iron fences set up to prevent cows entering the cornfield. Communities living in the mountains found ways to live in harmony with the environment, sometimes by negotiation instead of control. Xinlin Song, 2023.
‘Cosmoliving’ with mountains
Andre: This mountain space for people who live in the city becomes the escape and remedy from rationality, from social and ‘critical’ logic, and from Eurocentric visions. It opens a world of possibilities to other worlds, where mountains play a role and are part of the stories and adventures of grandparents and children.
I live in the Ecuadorian Andes, and the mountains are what mark the stories of the territory. Within our cosmolife (a worldview embedded in and informed by experience and ways of living), nature is part of our life; it is not other, not less or more, it is like us. Ecuador is one of the two countries in the world whose constitution recognizes the rights of nature. This gives it an institutionalized place in a political system — the application within the social sphere is being worked on. Here they are Apus, they are protective spirits, they are beings who must be respected, bringing offerings, intentions, and thanks. Walking them becomes an adventure in nature and an adventure of the spirit. The mountains have love, and they meet each other in the stories of Ecuadorian hearts. They are transformed into characters of impossible love that make them stay in a single territory and become the guardians. They are also the ones who measure time, climate, rainfall, the retreat of glaciers, those who welcome environmental pollution, and those who receive the changes of the world in their glaciers.
Chimborazo, 6263,47m from Carihuarizazo. Andre González Andino, 2020.
Xinlin: In the summer of 2022, I worked with a Tibetan nomadic community on a 4000m high plateau. In July, the eastern part of China experienced heavy rainfall, and many provinces were heavily flooded. I shared this news with my fellow herdsman colleague and told him how lucky we are on this sunny plateau, with rare occurrences of geological or climate issues. The middle-aged man shook his head and pointed to the nearby mountain peak. ‘You see the big black stone at the top? It was fully covered in snow when I was little, even in the summer.’ ‘We have a prophecy that says the world is healthy when the mountains are as white as the conch. The world begins to decay when the mountains are mottled like sky beads. The world is at an end when the mountains are brown and black like onyx. And you see, our mountain is no longer white as a conch. Less ice here means more rain on your part.’ His words deeply moved me, because this is not something that can be learned from a textbook but wisdom from deeply embedded life accumulated through generations, teachings from the mountains indeed.
New ways of seeing progress
Andre: The proposal to learn with nature, to embody it as a teacher comes from a decolonial vision, from sharing that in our desire for advancement, through the search for ‘progress’, the educational system has plasticized values, ethics, and knowledge that possibly began within practices that sought wisdom, connection, collective learning. What of this have we left? How can we open our eyes to see deeper into ourselves and our own worlds? What could ground us again into our life’s purpose? How can we connect to the wisdom of life to embody other ways of being? How can we unlearn the extractivist mind to de-hierarchize our relationship to nature, in general, to open up possibilities of doing things differently?
Xinlin: There’s nowhere more suitable to contemplate the narratives behind ‘progress’ than from the mountains. In a modernized, globalized, capitalistic world, mountains are resources, capital, property, and playgrounds. It was where advantages are waiting to be taken, profits to be made, and disproportionately, with no reciprocity performed. All mountainous communities on Earth have experienced different levels of disturbance from the modern economic story of take — make — waste. It’s fair to say that mountains, with their rich biodiversity and precious minerals, have been backing the growth-oriented economic story for the past 300 years. I believe, we too, should turn to the mountain for guidance to shape the post-growth reality. Starting with regenerating these traumatized ecosystems and inviting life back. Could this be a cross-disciplinary program offered by the mountain school?
Semi-Nomadic Kham community in Mt. Genie, Sichuan, China. Xinlin Song, 2022.
Towards a pedagogy for mountains as teachers
Andre: By putting nature at the center, as a teacher, we surrender to a more than human dialogue that surpasses the rational senses to learn other ways of walking, of seeing life, of feeling, of connecting, of facing fears, of responding.
We enter a ‘classroom’ where we control nothing but ourselves, where the labels or academic divisions of engineering, social sciences, and linguistics, among others, fall short of seeing the deep intertwining of living without naming, without rationalizing; live learning.
In these spaces, we then find classes on culture, literature, poetry, botany, glaciology, physics, history, spirituality, and an entire university. Thinking about pedagogy with the mountains, we have found from historical research and social links and actions that see them as learning spaces that they can be related to Learning Circuits — a pedagogy that is built on each personal path and dreams. It becomes a way of creating a syllabus for ourselves where we mark steps to follow the path we wish to follow. For example, if we want to reach Everest one day, to share a well-known reference, we won’t do it overnight. There will be learning that, depending on the individual, training could be a year, 10 years, or another lifetime away. The learning circuit is an invitation to mark the steps with the mountains, for example, start visiting mountains that are up to 5000m and keep climbing up to 7000m, and so on. This also can be done with the help of a community that knows the possible steps to arrive at the dream. So, the syllabus is built with the mountains, the community, and the personal objectives for life.
This can also be translated to life, to the practice of living where we can experience the joys that come from effort, as Ecuadorian mountaineer Fabián Zurita put it. In other words, knowing that for each step on a mountain, there is a cost, that there are no shortcuts, and that it comes from personal effort and motivation.
On the other hand, what types of learning will arrive from individuals visiting Apus all the time? What questions, paths, ideas can be opened with individuals making their way into the mountains sharing with a community open to a different way of learning?
Altar mountain in Ecuador. Andre González Andino, 2023.
Xinlin: Mountains play a multifaceted role encompassing ecological, spiritual, and cultural significance to both our planet and the human community. It is through profound acts of care that a mountain transforms into a space of reverence. This sacredness is, in essence, a subjective, even intimate experience, transcending objectivity. It is this deeply personal connection that we wish to rekindle with our planet. It is the spirit we wish to carry, manifesting a post-growth world we want to live in. In the Mountain School, there is rational knowledge for the mind, opening and nourishment for the hearts, and practical challenges for the hands. The pedagogy aligns the head, heart, and hands through projects that actively serve life.
Under Mt. Mo’erdo, people come to learn about and restore community waterways at the headwater region of the Yangtze River, Yunhe Centre. Xinlin Song, 2023.
This is not a call to ‘go-back’ but to ‘move-on’, It invites contemplation on how our modern scientific marvels, tools, and paradigms can serve as appropriate instruments in restoring this profound connection. When are we willing to leave all this engineered smartness behind and walk into the woods with each other?
As we are entering a space of naming differently, we want to invite a final quote to remind us of the limited space and offer that we are creating here. The language of the mountains and what can be learned amid them, is so big that cannot be named completely.
…mountains live in deep time…
…make a mockery of language…
…language is useless in relationship with place
— Robert McFarlane, in ‘Speaking the Anthropocene’
On the foothills of Ranrapalca (6162 m) in Cordillera Blanca, Perú. Andre González Andino, 2022.
Inspired? Here’s an invitation from the authors:
We hope to hear your mountain stories, and how mountains inspire you to rethink relationships with the more-than-human world. Either metaphorically or through embodied experience, what teachings from the mountain, and/or its Indigenous community have you received? We invite you to join the ongoing dialogue and co-creating the pedagogy for ‘learning from the mountains.’ Imagine the mountains of the world forming a network of learning spaces and focal points of active service for ecosystem restoration and economic regeneration.
