Because the two-billion-year-old rock is an actual connection to a world that existed before complex animal life on Earth.

Because the Roraima bush toad is an actual example of evolution inventing new reproductive strategies in response to isolation.

Because the Heliamphora pitcher plant is an actual example of the lengths that natural selection can go when nutrients are scarce and time is sufficient.

Because the rain that is falling on the summit plateau right now will run off the cliff edge and fall hundreds of meters and eventually reach one of three great river systems and eventually reach the sea, and this process has been operating, on these rocks, since before there were forests in this part of the world.

Because standing on that flat summit above those vertical cliffs, wrapped in the cloud that is the mountain’s constant companion, you are standing in a place that geology and biology and human meaning have been building, each in their own ways, for longer than comprehension easily reaches.