Where the land ends and the sky begins
My latest research trip to Chile’s Atacama Desert was a return journey so I was planning to dig deeper into previously visited places and explore some new spots. Instead I found myself gazing upwards, and my understanding of this unique landscape became informed by its unique relationship to the skies.
After a short flight from Santiago, the road from Calama to San Pedro unfolds through every imaginable shade of terracotta framed by gargantuan rock formations that seem less geological than theatrical. You feel as though the desert is preparing you, little by little, for something bigger ahead. Some sort of revelation.
People often describe the desert as a “landscape safari” destination or a playground for outdoor adventures. And yes, there are geysers, salt flats, flamingos, hot springs, coloured valleys, volcanoes and all the drama one could hope for. But beneath these cinematic landscapes there is something almost suspicious. A place so dry, so inhospitable, so stripped of excess, should not feel this alive. And yet it does and it seems to evolve around the relationship between the people and the sky.
The Atacama Desert is one of the driest places on Earth, and paradoxically, absence is what creates abundance above. The lack of humidity and rain allows astral radiation to reach our eyes with astonishing clarity. Here, the stars do not simply appear; they impose themselves.
Long before the desert was proclaimed by astronomers as one of the best spots on Earth to observe the skies – and so observatories like ALMA arrived – the Lickanantay people, native to the Atacama, were already reading the sky.
A solar calendar helped them to count the days, while ckamar was a shared word to describe months, the female cycle, and the moon. The brightness of the full moon meant working days, so it also served as a regent for the sowing cycles. The heavens offered meteorological predictions and spiritual orientation alike.
As local astronomer Basilio Solís Castillo would say, the sky is merely the canvas every culture paints upon differently. So while the Greeks drew shapes between stars according to their own mythology, naming constellations after Gods, zodiac signs and animals, for the Lickanantay the Milky Way was known as Mayu, the celestial river and the most important constellations emerge not from light, but from shadows in the Milky Way, yakana, the celestial llama and her cria, being the most important constellation, representing life, vital force, and fertility. These dark constellations are found in the nebulous spaces of the sky, and now we know that it is precisely where stars are born.
Even death here is treated as celestial. Much like in Mexico, during All Saint’s Day in early November, the night skies review something particular of that time of the year: the Milky Way seems to touch the horizon. This is interpreted by the atacameños (the modern way to refer to the Lickanantay) as the celestial river opening itself to welcome the dead back home. So on the “table of the dead”, prepared by the communities, arches are built with foliage mirroring the shape of the Milky Way, and offerings include breads shaped like llamas, birds, and tiny staircases helping souls ascend toward the sky.
There is something deeply moving about a culture that does not fear darkness, but reads stories within it. The dry soil grounds you completely, while the sky pulls you upwards. Perhaps that is why Atacama feels so mystical both during the day and night, with an ever present a soft milky drapery stretching above the desert, wrapping the landscape in an aura that is at once cosmic and intimate.
In Atacama, you constantly oscillate between the microscopic and the infinite. Between ancestral stories and interstellar distances. Between what is buried beneath your feet and what drifts above your head. And perhaps that is the true magic of the desert: not that it makes you feel small, but that it reminds you that humans have always searched the sky trying to understand who we are.
