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Stephen Ferry

Gladys Martínez (center) makes warming coffee with powdered milk for Eulogio Villafaña (left) and Ever Maestre at the edge of Lake Naboba. The night before, temperatures had fallen below freezing.

Valleys in the upper reaches of the Sierra Nevada are lined with detritus from glaciers that enveloped this region during the Little Ice Age, which ended here in the mid-1800s.

An Arhuaco woman walks alongside the Guatapurí River outside Sogrome. In this otherwise arid region, the river is a crucial water source for the city of Valledupar, which has a population of nearly half a million. But as the massif’s glaciers have shrunk, the Guatapurí’s headwaters have slowed to little more than a trickle.

Seynekun Villafaña coaxes her mule forward through dwarf forests and shrubs that live at about 10,000 feet above the sea. The Sierra Nevada is home to a remarkable variety of species of plants and animals found nowhere else on the planet.

Groups of Arhuaco make regular treks in the Sierra Nevada to carry out spiritual work but rarely in the company of “younger brothers,” as they call outsiders. Here, spiritual elder Adolfo Chaparro (left, back to camera) presides over a ceremony in which meditating residents of the village of Sogrome direct their thoughts into pieces of colored paper and thread he'll leave at sacred sites.

Under the guidance of Mamo Adolfo Chaparro (right), Arhuaco pilgrims carry out spiritual work. Here, he prepares to place packages containing spiritual payments beneath a sacred rock.

Lake Naboba and the summits of Bolívar and Colón are seen from halfway up the northern flank of Guardian Peak. The Arhuaco know this part of the Sierra Nevada as Chundua, which means, loosely, heaven.

In Sogrome, mamos sit in these stone seats—said to be antennas to communicate with the sky—to meditate about nature and how best to protect it.

As the world’s highest coastal massif, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta represents a microcosm of the planet, ranging from coral reefs to glaciers. More than 92 percent of the ice in its upper reaches has disappeared, and rivers fed by glacial meltwater that provide water to millions of people down below are drying up.

Arhuaco gather colored stones to be used as spiritual payments. Each colour represents a different aspect of the natural world: green for coca leaf chewed by the men, white for snow and ice, gray for water.