A story born from WALKINGNAZCA (1)
WALKINGNAZCA: THREE WAYS OF READING THE TERRITORY
The story of GIRDOR AND THE MINE THAT WAS BENEATH HIS FEET is only the beginning.
In reality, this tale is part of a narrative experience that emerged from WALKINGNAZCA, an application we imagined as a new way of walking, exploring, and relating to the territory.
In the future Post #1220, THE JOURNEY AS A BOOK: WHEN THE TERRITORY BEGINS TO SPEAK, we will explore in greater depth one of the central ideas of this essay: the territory can be read as a book.
But what happens when that book can not only be read, but also walked through?
What happens when the walker has a tool capable of connecting their position, their journey, what they observe, and what the territory holds?
WALKINGNAZCA was born from that question.
Not as a simple navigation application, but as a platform for territorial exploration and expanded presence, capable of transforming walking into an experience of searching, discovery, interpretation, and knowledge.
To develop this idea, we imagined three modules, each devoted to a different territory and, therefore, to a different way of reading it.
FIRST MODULE: THE EARTH
This is the module presented in this Post.
Here we meet GIRDOR, a character of the land, walking through the desert in search of a gold mine.
But WALKINGNAZCA does not merely direct him to a point on a map. Its true purpose is to lead him toward a new way of looking at, feeling, and interpreting what he encounters along the way.
The search for a mine may represent gold, silver, lithium, or other important materials hidden beneath the Earth’s surface.
But it may also represent something much deeper:
the possibility of discovering what has always been there, and yet what we had not learned to recognize.
That is why, in this first story, the journey is not merely the means of reaching a place.
The journey becomes part of the discovery.
SECOND MODULE: THE SEA
If the earth can hide its secrets beneath our feet, the sea keeps its secrets beneath the water.
This second WALKINGNAZCA module is designed to explore the underwater territory: to locate objects, vessels, structures, remains, and other elements hidden in the depths.
Its protagonist will be PULPA, a character of the sea and the water, transformed into a kind of sea prospector.
Here too, we will use the structure of a story.
Because walking does not necessarily mean walking on land.
It is also possible to walk in another way across the ocean floor.
And if the desert can be read as a book, the ocean floor can be read as one too.
Its pages are made of sand, rock, currents, shipwrecks, objects, traces, and structures that the water has preserved over time.
PULPA will have to learn to read those pages.
THIRD MODULE: THE SKY
The third module takes us into a different territory.
It is no longer simply about finding something hidden beneath the earth or beneath the sea.
It is about monitoring those achievements that humanity has conquered throughout its history and that may now be under threat.
Its protagonist will be CANCERBERO.
In its origins, Cerberus was represented as a guardian dog; but within our narrative universe, it can take on different forms according to whatever it is called upon to guard.
In this third story, it will appear as a three-headed eagle, connected to the territory of the skies.
Its mission will be to locate those places where some of humanity’s most significant achievements are under threat from different forces.
This module thus establishes a direct connection with the books:
THE SOCIAL CERBERUS. INFINITE DEFENSE — VOL. I. Available on Amazon, Kindle Edition: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GM8FG6R6
SOCIAL CERBERUS. THE PEOPLE MUST NOT FORGET — VOL. II. Available on Amazon, Kindle Edition: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HGGCDH2L
and
SOCIOECONOMIC PHILOSOPHY OF PROSPERITY — VOL. III.. Soon, Available on Amazon, Kindle Edition:
Here, WALKINGNAZCA acquires a new dimension.
It is no longer used merely to discover.
It is also used to recognize, monitor, and protect.
THREE TERRITORIES. THREE CHARACTERS. THREE WAYS OF WALKING.
GIRDOR represents the EARTH.
PULPA represents the SEA.
CANCERBERO represents the SKY.
Three characters.
Three territories.
Three stories.
Three forms of searching.
But behind all three lies the same question:
What might a being discover when it learns to walk in a different way?
Perhaps that is, ultimately, the true purpose of WALKINGNAZCA.
Not to locate treasures.
Not simply to find objects.
Not merely to point to coordinates.
But to help us discover that the territory is filled with information, memory, stories, and possibilities for knowledge.
Because when we learn to walk in a different way,
the journey ceases to be merely a journey.
It can become a book.
And perhaps then we will discover that some of its pages have always been beneath our feet.
For twelve years, Girdor had been searching for gold.
Not twelve months.
Not twelve seasons.
Twelve full years.
He had traversed ravines where he found nothing but stones.
He had descended into gullies where the water disappeared during the summer.
He had slept under mesquite trees.
He had spent entire nights inside a tent that the wind seemed eager to tear away from the desert.
He had learned to distinguish the sound of a falling stone from the sound of a stone that contained metal.
He had bought maps.
He had lost maps.
He had followed rumors.
He had followed men who claimed to have found gold.
He had even followed dreams.
And it always ended the same way.
Nothing.
Or almost nothing.
A small nugget.
A few flakes gleaming at the bottom of a gold pan.
A yellowish stone that for a few hours seemed to hold a fortune and, by dawn, returned to being simply a stone.
Girdor knew that disappointment.
He knew it all too well.
He had been born in northern Sonora, in a region where the mountains seemed to have been placed there to hide something.
His grandfather, Anselmo, had been a prospector.
His father, Rogelio, too.
In his family, it was said that the Lopera men—though Girdor was never quite sure if that was truly the original surname—had a special relationship with the earth.
Not because they knew where the gold was.
That would have been too easy.
They said they knew how to listen to the stones.
Girdor used to laugh when he remembered that.
His grandfather used to tell him:
—The earth speaks, boy.
—And what does it say?
—That is what you have to learn.
Girdor had never understood the answer.
At twenty, he thought his grandfather was simply talking the way old men talk.
At thirty, he began to suspect that perhaps there was something behind those words.
And now, after twelve years of searching for a mine that never appeared, he was beginning to wonder if the old man hadn’t meant exactly what he said.
Perhaps the earth did speak.
Perhaps the problem was that he had never learned its language.
I
The news about WALKINGNAZCA reached Girdor in a rather unextraordinary way.
He was sitting in a small diner in the mountains, drinking coffee, when a man he had met years ago asked him:
—Are you still looking for gold?
Girdor raised his eyes.
—What else am I going to do?
The man smiled.
—Walk.
—That’s what I’ve been doing for twelve years.
—No. You walk searching.
—And what’s the difference?
The man pulled out his phone.
—Look.
He showed him a platform.
On the screen, a figure appeared.
Girdor recognized the shape immediately.
—What is that?
—Nazca.
—Peru?
—Peru.
Girdor brought the phone closer.
The figure looked huge.
It was not a photograph.
It didn’t look exactly like a map either.
It was as if someone had managed to fit one of the great Nazca lines into a space that could be walked through.
—And what is this used for?
—To walk.
Girdor burst out laughing.
—Walk a Nazca figure?
—Yes.
—And what does that have to do with gold?
—I don’t know.
—Then why are you showing it to me?
The man remained silent for a few seconds.
—Because maybe you’ve been looking for gold the same way for twelve years.
Girdor stopped laughing.
The phrase bothered him.
Precisely because it might be true.
—What’s it called?
—WALKINGNAZCA.
II
Girdor obtained the platform a few days later.
He opened it one night while sitting at his kitchen table.
The screen offered him several Nazca figures.
Spider.
Monkey.
Hummingbird.
Condor.
Dog.
And other shapes whose original meanings, as the platform itself explained, could not be known with absolute certainty.
Girdor chose the hummingbird first.
The application allowed him to select a region.
Then something appeared that strongly caught his attention.
SCALE.
He could modify the size of the figure to adapt it to the territory he was going to walk.
He could also choose the starting point.
Girdor thought it was a kind of game.
But he decided to try it.
He entered the coordinates of an area in the Sierra de la Tinaja.
It was not a known mine.
It was not a tourist spot.
It was simply a region he had crossed several times.
He selected an approximate scale.
He picked a starting point.
And he began.
He did not walk in the desert.
He walked on his screen.
But something strange happened.
The application wasn’t just showing him a line.
It was showing him a path.
A body inside a space.
A sequence of directions.
A curve.
A shift.
A distance.
A return.
Girdor traced the path with his finger.
Then he did it again.
Then he took a pencil and drew it on a sheet of paper.
That night he didn’t find gold.
But he discovered something.
He had walked in a different way.
III
The next day he tried again.
This time he chose the spider.
Then the monkey.
Then the hummingbird once more.
He was not looking for a mine yet.
He was experimenting.
He had discovered that he could adjust the scale of the figures and make their paths adapt to different terrains.
And he began to wonder:
What happens when the same territory is traversed following different shapes?
With the hummingbird, the path was light.
Quick changes.
Directions that seemed to escape.
With the spider, the lines extended.
The imaginary body occupied a larger territory.
There were long extensions.
With the monkey, other relationships emerged.
Girdor began taking notes.
He didn’t write:
“Gold is here.”
He wrote:
“The path changes here.”
“I feel something here.”
“Here it seems the direction wants to loop back.”
“The slope matters here.”
“The ground seems to open up here.”
He didn’t know exactly what those sentences meant.
But he kept writing them.
After several days, something he didn’t expect began to happen.
The virtual paths were altering the way he remembered the real landscape.
He would see a hillside and remember a line from the hummingbird.
He would find a fracture in a rock and think of one of the spider’s legs.
He would reach a fork in the path and remember a curve.
The platform was beginning to turn into something else.
It wasn’t telling him where the gold was.
It was teaching him to look differently at the place where he was searching for gold.
IV
Girdor returned to the Sierra de la Tinaja.
He brought his phone.
He didn’t need a constant internet connection.
He had previously prepared a few routes.
He chose the hummingbird again.
He started walking.
One hour.
Two hours.
Three.
He found nothing.
The next day he returned.
Nothing.
On the third day, he found a small patch of quartz.
He picked it up.
He observed it.
He saved it.
It wasn’t enough.
Over the following weeks, he walked dozens of routes.
Some ended in ravines.
Others against rock walls.
Others in places where the vegetation made it impossible to continue.
The platform evoked sensations that were difficult to explain.
Sometimes he had the impression that a route felt “heavy.”
Other times he felt a line was too open.
Occasionally, a sense of unease would arise as he approached certain locations.
Girdor began calling these impressions:
The feelings (2).
Not because he believed they were magical messages.
On the contrary.
He had learned something important.
A feeling was not an answer.
It was a question.
When something produced a feeling in him, he had to investigate.
Look.
Measure.
Compare.
Return.
That began to change the way he searched.
V
One afternoon, after nearly six months of using WALKINGNAZCA, something different happened.
Girdor was walking a spider figure adapted to an area of the mountains he had known for years.
He had walked that place many times.
He had never found anything.
The spider pattern ended near a slope.
Girdor stopped walking.
He looked at the screen.
Then he raised his head.
He looked at the mountain.
He looked back at the phone.
Something didn’t align.
He didn’t know what.
He continued.
The figure advanced toward an area he had always considered uninteresting.
It was a gentle slope.
No large rocks.
No ravine.
No visible quartz.
Nothing to catch a prospector’s eye.
And yet, Girdor felt something.
It wasn’t excitement.
It wasn’t joy.
It was a kind of inner silence.
The route seemed to lose momentum right there.
As if the figure had reached a spot where the territory ceased to respond.
Girdor stood motionless.
He then remembered something he had learned from his grandfather.
—The earth speaks.
He looked around.
And for the first time, he understood the second part of that phrase he had taken so many years to comprehend.
You didn’t have to wait for the earth to speak.
You had to learn to recognize when something stopped behaving the way it should.
Girdor began to observe.
The slope.
The stones.
The vegetation.
The color of the ground surface.
The direction of small runoffs after the rain.
He found a fracture line.
Then another.
And another.
He pulled out his phone.
He took photographs.
He marked the coordinates.
He returned home.
That night, he began studying geology.
VI
For several days, Girdor did not go out to walk.
He read.
He compared.
He consulted geological maps.
He studied photographs.
He learned something that, until then, he had overlooked.
Gold does not always present itself where the prospector expects to see it.
It can be associated with specific fracture systems.
It can be transported and redeposited.
It can appear alongside quartz and other minerals.
It can be found in veins whose surface expression is extremely subtle.
Girdor understood something that struck him as almost ironic.
For twelve years, he had been searching for visible gold.
But a mine does not necessarily announce itself as a mine.
He returned to the mountains.
This time he didn’t just carry his phone.
He brought a geological hammer.
A magnifying glass.
Maps.
A notebook.
A compass.
And something new:
A different way of looking.
He reached the area where the spider route had produced that strange silence.
He began to walk.
He didn’t search immediately.
He observed.
He found a small outcrop of quartz.
He examined it.
Nothing.
He continued.
A few meters ahead, another appeared.
Then another.
Girdor began to follow the direction of the fractures.
And then it happened.
He found a small stain.
It wasn’t spectacular.
It didn’t shine like in the movies.
It was barely an alteration in the rock.
But something caught his attention.
He took a sample.
He saved it.
He continued.
He found another.
Then another.
The samples began to form a line.
Girdor stopped walking.
He sat down on a stone.
He looked at the hillside.
And he understood.
He hadn’t found a single golden stone.
He had found a direction.
VII
Over the following days, he followed that direction.
The veins did not appear continuously.
Sometimes they disappeared.
Then they returned.
In some places, they were hidden.
In others, barely visible.
Girdor marked every point.
He drew a map.
Then he overlaid his observations onto the routes he had walked in WALKINGNAZCA.
He couldn’t believe it.
Not because the platform had pointed out the mine.
It hadn’t.
It wasn’t even designed to look for gold.
What had happened was different.
The routes had changed the way he experienced space.
They had made him pay attention to directions, sequences, slopes, shifts, distances, and relationships he used to ignore.
And that had led him to observe the land in a new way.
The platform hadn’t found the gold.
It had helped Girdor encounter the territory.
And the territory, in turn, began to speak to him in a language he could verify.
Geology.
Fractures.
Minerals.
Slopes.
Runoffs.
Erosion.
Time.
Girdor understood that feeling was not opposed to science.
It could be the beginning of a scientific question.
VIII
One morning, he found the first major vein.
It wasn’t a revelation.
It was hard work.
Hours of observation.
Samples.
Comparisons.
Return trips.
Errors.
Corrections.
And finally, a mineralized line cutting through the rock.
Girdor stared at it for a long time.
Then he looked for its direction.
The vein continued.
Further ahead, he found another.
And another.
When he returned to camp that afternoon, he was carrying a small sample.
He placed it on the table.
He looked at it.
And he thought of his grandfather.
He remembered those words once more:
—The earth speaks, boy.
Girdor smiled.
—Yes, grandfather —he said softly—. But you have to learn how to listen to it.
IX
Word of the mine began to spread.
People arrived.
Geologists.
Engineers.
Prospectors.
The curious.
Some wanted to know how he had found it.
Girdor showed them his maps.
He showed them the fractures.
The samples.
The routes.
And the same question always surfaced:
—Did WALKINGNAZCA show you where the gold was?
Girdor shook his head.
—No.
—Then how did you find it?
Girdor would take a few seconds before answering.
—I don’t know exactly.
And then he would correct himself:
—Well… yes, I do.
The others waited.
—The platform taught me to walk in a different way.
—And that found the mine?
—No.
—Then what did it do?
Girdor looked out toward the mountain.
—It made me realize I had been searching for twelve years without truly looking.
X
Months passed.
Mining operations began carefully.
The richness of the vein still had to be determined.
It was not an instant fortune.
It was not the end of all problems.
It was not a magical treasure.
It was a possibility.
An opportunity.
A mine that would have to be studied, measured, protected, and worked.
But for Girdor, that was no longer the most important thing.
He had learned something worth far more than a gold nugget.
One afternoon, he returned alone to the mountain.
He carried WALKINGNAZCA on his phone.
He opened the hummingbird figure again.
The same one he had started with months ago.
He selected the region.
Adjusted the scale.
Chose the starting point.
And began to walk it.
This time he was searching for nothing.
Not searching for gold.
Not searching for a mine.
Not searching for answers.
He was simply walking.
Halfway through the route, he stopped.
He looked at the mountain.
Then he looked at the ground.
He thought about the previous twelve years.
He had walked thousands of kilometers.
He had crossed mountains.
He had slept under the stars.
He had followed maps.
He had chased rumors.
He had gathered stones.
He had dug.
He had lost money.
He had gained experience.
But he had never understood one fundamental thing:
One can be standing inside a mine and still fail to find the vein.
Not because the vein isn’t there.
But because one hasn’t learned to recognize it yet.
Girdor picked up a stone.
He observed it.
Then he raised his eyes toward the mountain.
And smiled.
Perhaps it was the same with ideas.
With opportunities.
With people.
With paths (3).
With life.
Perhaps, so often, what we seek is not far away.
It lies within something we are already walking through.
We just don’t know how to see it.
XI
Before leaving, Girdor opened the app one last time.
On the screen appeared the hummingbird.
A figure born thousands of kilometers away.
A figure created by a people whose original meaning we still try to comprehend.
Girdor thought of those people who, centuries ago, had traced enormous shapes across the desert.
He thought of the paths.
The animals.
The feet.
Time.
Memory.
The questions that had outlived those who asked them.
And then he understood something no one had taught him.
Perhaps the true value of WALKINGNAZCA wasn’t in guiding a person all the way to Nazca.
Perhaps it was in teaching them that a path can change the way one looks at the place where they already stand.
Girdor turned off the phone.
Put away his tools.
And began walking back.
This time he knew exactly where he was going.
But, for the first time in twelve years, he was in no hurry to get there.
XII
Years later, when someone asked him how he had found that mine, Girdor would tell the story.
Some laughed.
Others didn’t understand.
Some wanted to try the platform.
Others wanted to know which figure he had used.
Girdor always gave them the same answer:
—It wasn’t the spider.
—Then it was the hummingbird?
—Neither.
—The monkey?
—No.
—Then which one?
Girdor would smile.
—The one who walked was me.
And when they persisted:
—But something must have shown you where to look.
Girdor looked toward the mountains.
—Yes.
—What?
Girdor took a few seconds.
—A feeling.
—What feeling?
Then he pointed to the ground.
—The feeling of realizing that I was looking for one thing when I should have been learning how to look at another.
No one completely understood.
Neither did Girdor.
But he no longer needed to understand it completely.
He had learned that a feeling isn’t necessarily an answer.
Sometimes it’s a door.
And a door is only useful when you decide to walk through it.
EPILOGUE
Girdor never again said that he had found a mine thanks to WALKINGNAZCA.
He said something different:
“WALKINGNAZCA helped me find the way to search.”
Because the mine was there before he discovered it.
The veins were there.
The fractures were there.
The stones were there.
The territory was there.
The only thing missing was his way of seeing.
And perhaps that was the true lesson he had received after twelve years of searching.
We humans don’t always know where the gold mines are.
But there is something even harder:
Sometimes we happen to be standing right inside them, and we still don’t know how to recognize the veins.
That is why we walk.
That is why we search.
That is why we feel.
That is why we return.
Because perhaps the path doesn’t always lead us to what we are looking for.
Sometimes it does something much more important:
It teaches us to recognize it when it is finally right beneath our feet.
“The path didn’t find the gold. It taught Girdor to recognize the vein.”
(El camino no encontró el oro. Le enseñó a Girdor a reconocer la veta.)
WALKINGNAZCA does not locate treasures. It locates stories.
In Girdor, the story lies beneath the earth.
In Pulpa, it will lie beneath the sea.
In Cancerbero, it will be under threat within the territory we inhabit and in the memory of what humanity has achieved.
“…to walk not merely to arrive somewhere, but to learn to read what we encounter along the way.”
(1) WALKINGNAZCA. Portable Territorial Exploration Terminal. System: WALKINGNAZCA — mobile platform for territorial exploration, navigation, and interpretation.
Device: rugged, portable, smart mobile field terminal.
Display: high-resolution touchscreen, approximately 6–7 inches.
Dimensions: approximately 16 × 8 × 1 cm.
Weight: 200–250 g, depending on configuration.
Geolocation: integrated GPS/GNSS with real-time positioning.
Mapping: satellite maps and digital territorial mapping, with local storage capability.
Operating Range: navigation and recording without predetermined physical limits; range depends on map coverage, GPS/GNSS availability, and connectivity.
Connectivity: GPS/GNSS, Wi-Fi, mobile network, and Bluetooth.
Battery Life: approximately 8–12 hours of continuous field use. Battery: Rechargeable lithium-ion battery, approximately 4,000–5,000 mAh.
Main functions: Location tracking, hiking routes, identification of territorial features, route recording, map viewing, photography, and territorial documentation.
Concept: A digital tool to transform walking into a way of understanding the landscape.
(2) Loya Lopategui, Carlos, The Other Feeling, EMULISA, México, 2026. Availale on Amazon, Kindle edition in Spanish: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0HL27VCWC
(3) Loya Lopategui, Carlos, The Journey as a Book, EMULISA, México, 2026. Availale on Amazon, Kindle edition in Spanish: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0HL6Y8CBK