“Speaking with Wilfran is like hearing music in a warm voice. It feels like being welcomed and gently led into a whole new world. Though born in Fonseca, La Guajira, he moved early on with his parents to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. There, he found his calling. It came to him while herding cattle for his grandfather, Segundo Fragoso, and while picking fruit in the countryside. But also walking to school, because he had to cross forests each day, and that was how he fell in love with a landscape he now honors by carving enormous tree trunks. Trunks, however, that he never cuts—he finds them on his walks, and they seem to call to him.

He says this and pauses, enjoying the surprise on our faces. Then he continues, explaining how, in this place, in which dry and humid forest meet, trunks from gusanero, matarratón, or cedro trees lie on the forest floor for so long that insects—hence the name gusanero—etch strange patterns into the wood. These natural designs, formed over time, are the guides for his machete and tools. That’s what he means when he says he talks with trees. He sees shapes in nature—magnificent visions—that he only seeks to exalt with his carvings. This began during the great avalanche of 1999, when the river filled the land with ancient trunks and roots. At that moment, he saw a thousand forms and promised himself he’d one day share them with the world.

But before carving, there was guiding. Living near the Sierra, he knew the terrain like the back of his hand. Tourists were always arriving, and he became a trusted companion for hikers, especially because he had long-standing bonds with the Kogui people, one of the four Indigenous groups of the Sierra. He earned a living guiding people through this sacred land, and in those treks, he realized the Sierra was not just a trail—it was a path for life.

It was Professor Ferradani, his first mentor, who saw Wilfran’s gift. A carver and social studies teacher, with whom Wilfran will be forever grateful. Ferradani taught Wilfran to work with totumo, the calabash fruit, and soon invited him to be his classroom assistant. But even then, Wilfran didn’t become an artisan right away. After finishing school, he joined the police as an auxiliary officer and trained in light construction at SENA. Yet the call of the wood—just like the insects in the trunks—kept gnawing at him. Eventually, he returned to carving and followed the trail that nature had so clearly laid before him.

He entered competitions and won recognition with a mask he presented as a totem. Word spread quickly: “This guy knows what he’s doing,” they said, and commissions began to roll in. Today, his monumental fish—like the three-meter-long pargo mulato carved in cedro, or a giant pirarucú, or a sawfish in guayacán wood—grace hotels and hostels across the region. He even makes lamps from tree bark. His work is imagination made solid. He invites everyone to visit him in Vereda La Estrella, kilometer 24 on the road to Riohacha, in his paradise named Wuenama, which means “sacred stone” in Kogui.”