When in New Mexico, attend a feast day at a Native American pueblo

When in New Mexico, attend a feast day at a Native American pueblo

William Clark plays a flute during a performance at Hyatt Regency Tamaya on July 25, 2019. The Santa Ana Pueblo, which owns the property where the hotel is located, hosts a feast day each July 26 in its nearby village. Photos are not allowed at the event. Pam LeBlanc photo

The magic of travel unfolds when you get a glimpse into the lives of people from different parts of the world – or just the next state over.

Every July 26, the Tamayame people gather at their old pueblo village, about 30 minutes from Albuquerque, to celebrate their patron saint of St. Anne. I joined a small group staying at the nearby Hyatt Regency Tamaya in visiting the pueblo village today, expecting to see some traditional dances and learn a little about the culture.

I left with much more than that.

New Mexico is home to 19 pueblos, each with its own patron saint and calendar of feast days. At the festivals, community members dance, wear traditional costume, share food, celebrate the harvest and honor their patron saint.

But it’s way more than that. The feasts highlight friendships and family, and in a way they thank the world for taking you into its fold.

We arrived a little before noon, just as lines of dancers – women with long black hair wearing black dresses and moccasins, men with sashes, white leggings and fox tails strung from their hips – lined up to file into the small plaza and dance to the beat of drums and chanting. They all carried pine boughs; some had bells strung around their legs.

We watched for 45 minutes, then ducked into an alcove of greenery at the end of the procession to pay respects to St. Anne, the mother of Mary.

Afterward, in an unplanned stroke of travel nirvana, a man named Travis invited us into his home on the edge of the plaza to sit at his family’s dinner table and share in a traditional feast. We met his wife and children, and squeezed around a huge table while bowl after bowl of homemade food made the rounds.

I ate the best green chile chicken enchiladas I’ve ever tasted. I sipped posole spiked with chicken, nibbled rich, smokey carne guisada, tasted roasted corn dusted with something that tasted like cojita, and tried a dozen other dishes bursting with the flavors of New Mexico. I left with a crunchy sweet pueblo cookie tucked in my pocket.

We thanked our hosts, who told us all we could do to return the favor was sign the guest book. And now that we’ve been taken into the fold, we were told, we were welcome to come back every July 26 for the family’s feast.

I saw a coyote during a walk this morning, before heading to the Santa Ana Pueblo to celebrate St. Anne’s Feast Day. Pam LeBlanc photo

That kind of generosity just doesn’t happen every day, and it didn’t end there.

We stepped out of the little adobe home into bright sunshine, squinted our eyes and discovered that in our absence, the villagers had brought their feast day offerings out to share. A line of food – cookies, wedges of watermelon, home-made tamales tied in corn husks, cups of stew and piles of bananas – stretched for at least 25 yards down the center of the plaza. All this, set against the gorgeous backdrop of a rugged mesa wall.

We were told to partake, lest we offend anyone. So, of course, we did.

The pueblo’s feast dates to the influence of the Spaniards, who came here in the late 1500s to spread the Catholic religion. They assigned each community a patron saint, and each pueblo holds a feast day to honor that saint. The festivals combine the cultural influences of the Spaniards and the locals.

Many of the feast days are open to the public. If you go, respect the community you are visiting. Women should wear modest clothing, and don’t attempt to photograph or even sketch what you see.

For more information about feast days go to https://www.indianpueblo.org/19-pueblos/feast-days/. For more information about the Santa Ana Pueblo, go to http://www.santaana.org.

And look for more about my visit to Tamaya in an upcoming article.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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She drove us to a trailhead 9 years ago, last week we met for tea in Bozeman

She drove us to a trailhead 9 years ago, last week we met for tea in Bozeman

Pam LeBlanc and Jenny Dalimata pose outside a coffee shop in Bozeman. Dalimata shuttled Pam and five other hikers to a remote area of the park in 2010. Chris LeBlanc photo

In 2010, I backpacked the Northern Traverse at Glacier National Park with my husband and four other friends.

When we got to the park, we needed a way to get to the trailhead, located in the remote northwest corner of Glacier not served by shuttles.

That’s how we found Jenny Dalimata. We found her at a restaurant where she was waiting tables in West Glacier. She seemed nice, so we gave her $100 bucks to drive us in our rental car to the trailhead and return it to a more centrally located parking lot. We crossed our fingers that she wouldn’t disappear, but we were pretty sure it would work out fine.

It did, of course. We got a friendly ride to the trailhead and we got the car back in the end.

Jenny and I have stayed in touch via social media since then. She’s an amazing athlete, who spends lots of time skiing, hiking and trail running in and around Glacier. She and her seven brothers grew up just outside of the park, and she “ran wild” as a kid.

When I headed back to Glacier this year, I tracked her down, and we met at a coffee shop in Bozeman before I caught my flight back to Austin. She still remembers that my backpacking buddies and I all ordered grilled salmon and huckleberry pie the night we met – and did it again after we finished our 65-mile trek.

“When you came out (of the back country) you were like ‘I’ll have another,’” she says.

Pam stands at the entrance of Glacier National Park in July 2019.

These days, Jenny routinely makes a 30- to 50-mile runs through the park and other wilderness areas around Montana for fun and stress relief.

Since it’s grizzly country, she carries bear spray – and three times she’s had to deploy it, once when a grizzly bear charged her. (No worries, the griz spun and fled when she deployed.) Another time, while snow camping in the winter, she saw a wolverine near Lake Josephine.

That never happens on Austin trails, although I did meet a tiny black bear while trail running at Big Bend National Park one morning a few years ago.

The trails at Glacier, Jenny says, are pristine, nicely graded and well maintained, perfect for trail running.

“My heart lives there,” she says. “It’s powerful for me to be there.”

We shared tea and chatted about where our lives have taken us.

The thing about travel that makes it so special is the people you meet along the way. The randomness of who you cross paths with always amazes me. We met Jenny over salmon and pie, and 10 years later we saw each other again.

And I know I’ll see her the next time I get back to Montana.

 

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Chili and chicken and dumplings top the menu for next week’s backpacking trip

Chili and chicken and dumplings top the menu for next week’s backpacking trip

Chris LeBlanc prepares oatmeal and dried strawberries while backpacking the John Muir Trail in 2016. Pam LeBlanc photo

I’ve been busy this week gathering food for my upcoming trip to Glacier National Park.

Yesterday, I received a shipment of dehydrated meals from Austin-based Packit Gourmet. On the menu? Dottie’s Chicken and Dumplings, Texas State Fair Chili, West Memphis Grits Souffle and Mom’s Banana Puddin’.

Yum.

Here’s my shipment of Packit Gourmet meals for next week’s trip to Glacier National Park. Pam LeBlanc photo

I’ve been a fan of the brand since I met company founders Sarah Welton and her mother Debbie Mullins about three years ago. They gave me some meals to take and test when I spent 15 days backpacking the John Muir Trail in California. (Until then, my go-to brand of dehydrated meals was Mountain House, and I still like their pasta primavera and lasagna.)

Here’s what I wrote after that trip:

“My verdict? The breakfasts — especially the West Memphis Grits Souffle — tasted like real (and really good) food. The desserts, especially the banana pudding, also sent my taste buds sizzling. The entrees were more hit and miss — I loved the chicken and dumplings, and Texas State Fair chili eased my craving for nachos. But the All-American Burger Wrap (provide your own tortilla) didn’t thrill me. And one complaint: Too much packaging, especially when you have to haul out all the waste.”

The Mullins family did a lot of canoe camping when Sarah was growing up. Debbie made all the meals. When Sarah grew up, she realized she didn’t like any of the freeze-dried meals on the market for backpackers, so the two got together and came up with their own.

Dottie’s Chicken and Dumplings looks like confetti until you add the hot water. Then it blooms into real – and real yummy – food. Pam LeBlanc photo

I visited the company’s humble headquarters out on Fitzhugh Road, where we brewed up a batch of Dottie’s Chicken and Dumplings, named after Welton’s grandmother, for lunch. I remember thinking it looked like a bowl of confetti that bloomed into a piping hot bowl of actual food when we poured hot water over it.

Packit Gourmet launched in 2008 with just a few items, including Austintacious Tortilla Soup. Backpacker Magazine awarded the company an editor’s choice award for the soup, and Packit was on its way.

Today the company offers about 50 different meals, including vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free and dairy-free options. There’s Tuscan beef stew, shepherd’s cottage pie, Meyer lemon cheesecake and even a powdered margarita mix to pour into water or alcohol. Unlike some freeze-dried meals, they don’t taste like salted cardboard!

And look – banana puddin’ for dessert! Pam LeBlanc photo

The packaging has changed in the last few years. There are fewer individually packaged items within each meal, and most come in their own “cook-in” bags. Just add hot water. Some need only cold water. A few require a skillet for preparation.

The biggest selection is available online, but select items are sold locally at Whole Earth Provision Company.

About Pam

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My backpack is loaded, I’m heading to Glacier National Park

My backpack is loaded, I’m heading to Glacier National Park

I’m a tree hugger (seen here hugging a tree in Sequoia National Park), and Saturday I’m heading to Montana to backpack Glacier National Park. Chris LeBlanc photo

I haven’t swung a backpack over my shoulders since last October, when I took a quick overnighter on the South Rim Trail at Big Bend National Park.

That’s way too long in my books, so I’m loading up my dehydrated meals, camp stove, sleeping bag and sunglasses and heading to Montana this weekend for a week’s worth of adventuring at Glacier National Park.

Glacier tops my list of favorite parks. I spent a week there about 10 years ago, backpacking for six days from the Kintla Lake trailhead near Polebridge to Chief Mountain trailhead on the east side.

Nothing makes me happier than spending time outdoors. That’s me during a backpacking trip on the High Sierra Trail five years ago. Chris LeBlanc photo

Highlights of that trip? Lots of ripe thimbleberries, which are hands down the best tasting berries on the planet. Skinny dipping in ice-cold Cosley Lake. A park ranger on a giant white horse, tracking a grizzly bear. Crawling on all fours across a stretch of trail with a dropoff so sheer it made me curl up in the fetal position every 100 feet or so. And the best campsite I’ve ever pitched a tent at in my life. That site, called Hole in the Wall, features a huge rock amphitheater carved out by ancient glaciers and gushing with waterfalls. We camped in the middle of it, listening to rushing water and soaking in a remarkable view of the sloping valley floor far below.

This year’s trip will be different. We’re hiking to Granite Chalet, a back country hut with no running water or electricity, but a roof and flat spot to lay a sleeping bag. I’m also signed up for a birding workshop, and am lugging some of my favorite camera lenses along for the trip – something I normally don’t do on a backpacking trip because they weigh too much.

Want to read about my last trip to Glacier? Check it out at https://www.statesman.com/travel/backpacking-through-glacier-national-park-bears-berries-and-bliss/FUj9vchtGlWhgcd6qx9qGO/.

And stay tuned for updates next week after I get out of the woods.

Here’s my regular crew of backpacking compadres. It’ll be just me and Chris next week at Glacier.

 

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Arctic Cowboys postpone expedition until 2020

Arctic Cowboys postpone expedition until 2020

West Hansen, shown here paddling south of Victoria in 2018, has postponed his attempt to paddle the Northwest Passage. Pam LeBlanc photo

The Arctic Cowboys have postponed their expedition to kayak the Northwest Passage until next summer.

Team leader West Hansen, who in 2012 led a National Geographic-sponsored team that paddled the entire Amazon River and in 2014 led the first descent of the Volga River in Russia, says the team needs more funding before attempting to become the first to paddle the remote 1,900-mile route.

“While the team was in prime shape, after training for and completing the 260-mile Texas Water Safari, the funding was insufficient to launch the expedition and we did not want to begin without adequate resources to assure a successful crossing,” Hansen wrote in a press release. “The distance and conditions are formidable enough without concerns regarding transportation to and from the Arctic and reasonable supplies.”

Hansen, a 57-year-old social worker from Austin, along with paddlers Jeff Wueste, 58, and Jimmy Harvey, 56, will face challenges in the form of polar bears, crushing sea ice and frigid temperatures during their Arctic trip.

During the next 11 months, they’ll look for financial sponsors. They’ll also make training runs along the 385-mile Texas coastline this winter, testing their Epic sea kayaks in heavy wind and waves.

Hansen paddling in a slough near Victoria in 2018. Pam LeBlanc photo

About Pam

I’m Pam LeBlanc. Follow my blog to keep up with the best in outdoor travel and adventure. Thanks for visiting my site.

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