A stunning, generous layout of Jorge’s pilgrimage photos to complement the prologue of MELTED AWAY? Yes, please! I’m honored to have “Lord of the Snow Star” featured in Terrain.org with Jorge’s images of the glacier pilgrimage of Qoyllur Rit’i (Quechua for “Shining Snow Star”) accompanying my words. (More about Jorge’s work here.)

Many thanks to editor Simmons Buntin for giving space to our collaboration, which took place over 6 years in the Cordillera Vilcanota, in southern Peru.

“Lord of the Snow Star” is the prologue to Melted Away: A Memoir of Climate Change and Caregiving in Peru, my deeply personal eco-memoir published last year by LSU Press. This work toggles between scenes in the remote high Andes and the desert capital of Lima, and part of my challenge as a writer was to make the dynamics of the glacier pilgrimage accessible and ‘felt’ for readers unfamiliar with the Andes (i.e., most readers). I hope I succeeded, but these images by Jorge will perhaps make it easier to grasp what the pilgrimage was like in the 2000s and early 2010s, when rapid climate change was unending hundreds of years of sacred rituals at the site.

Thanks to Jorge Vera for climbing the mountain with me and for sharing your work with Terrain.

Thanks to LSU Press for giving Terrain permission to publish this excerpt.

Thanks to Hasselblad for their support of our 2009 pilgrimage/expedition and for loaning Jorge a digital back for his Hasselblad camera. That expedition marked the first time that Hasselblad’s digital back was used at heights of 16,000 to 18,000 feet above sea level, in sub-zero temperatures, and it performed splendidly.

If you haven’t done so already, please buy a copy of MELTED AWAY online (https://bookshop.org/…/melted-away-a-memoir…/20734172… ). Or, get a signed copy at The Lynx Books or Books & Books.

Recommending my book to your local library is also very much appreciated. Thank you in advance!

Link to story at Terrain: https://www.terrain.org/…/lord-of-the-shining-show-star/