In 1986, at the age of 21, Alejandra Melfo moved to Mérida, Venezuela, the “city of eternal snows,” to study physics at the University of the Andes. There, in the mountain city, she often looked out toward the horizon at the vast Sierra Nevada de Mérida: a large, muscular, towering expanse three miles in the sky and blanketed by snow and the broad sheets of glaciers. Having just arrived from Uruguay, a country with no mountain ranges, she fell in love. As the years went by, Melfo saw the landscape…
