Award Double Header

This week it's been raining blessings. My book Backroads & Byways of New Mexico: Drives, Day Trips and Weekend Excursions was named a winner in the New Mexico Book Awards. The publisher is The Countryman Press, a division of W.W. Norton, and the guide is available through bookstores and on-line.

In addition, I received notice that I had been awarded writer of the year in "2008 Best of Albuqueque," sponsored by the U.S. Local Business Association. I am honored to receive the accolade because no matter where I roam in my writing career, Albuquerque is home--my favorite place on earth.

International Gastromony & Tourism

Put a dozen or so international foodies in a room, give them a couple hours to discuss their culinary traditions, and you have a fascinating afternoon. During the UNESCO International Conference on Creative Tourism, I participated in a symposium on gastronomy and how it influences travel.

Within the circle of experts, the lively discussion hit on diverse topics. After briefly introducing ourselves, we discussed our favorite food cities and why their food appealed so strongly. As with many such interactions, the primaries lead quickly into the discussion of culinary issues.

One of the first to speak was Julia Chiu from Toronto, who concentrated on the social aspect new regulations had on Japan, especially the inferior material found recently in imports from China. She also touched on the Japanese custom of producing special foods which Asian custom believes a benefit to the elderly.

Benedetto Zacchiroli, from the Bologna Mayor’s office, entertained us with tales of his experiences with Italian food in the U.S. Now we know real pasta Bolognese is not made with spaghetti but tagliatelli, the meat is never beef but pork, and the sauce is called ragu. The American version, he commented, is but one example of the globalization of traditional dishes.

A representative from Santiago de Compostela provided insights in Galician cuisine, generally misunderstood outside her country. The foods of Spain’s northwestern peninsula are not, as often portrayed, Mediterranean, but Atlantic. The Galician’s catch over 80 different types of saltwater fish, both along their coast and world-wide as well as a tremendous quantity of mussels and other shellfish. Vigo, the largest city in Galicia, is Spain’s most important fishing port and the third largest in Europe.

George Poussin, who oversees UNESCO Creative Cities program, spoke of the cult dimension of gastronomy and the “intangible heritage” of traditional cooking. Emphasizing the difference being creativity, he said we need not only protect the past but open new culinary criteria.

In addition, he mentioned how difficult it was, especially in developing, countries, to initiate the Creative Cities plan. Currently, there are only 12: Aswan, Egypt; Berlin: Bologna: Buenos Aires: Edinburgh;: Glasgow; Lyon; Melbourne; Montreal; Seville; Popayan, Columbia; and Santa Fe, the only U.S. representative.


Perhaps Jo Harvey Allen of Santa Fe voiced the most interesting topic. She has been instrumental in a program electronically joining farmer’s markets around the world. Dubbed “SEE,” it involves ten mammoth LCD screens to be mounted in select growers’ markets, starting with Santa Fe’s well-known Railyard Market. “Markets are the heartbeat of a whole city,” she said, “and we plan to connect time-zone adjusted video installations. If you’re in Barcelona’s Boqueria, you can see the action in Santa Fe.” The program has been funded and a committee is considering appropriate locations.

Summing up our feelings as we dispersed to the ballroom to hear Geoffrey Godbey speak, Duncan Sill of the Santa Fe County Planning & Development Division, said, “As travelers, gastronomy is a good way to engage in the human condition.” Amen to that!

Conference on Creative Tourism

In the first global gathering of its kind, delegates from around the world met in Santa Fe this week to explore the concept of Creative Tourism. The comprehensive program included talks, seminars, and interaction with Santa Fe artists, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, craftspeople, and business experts.

What is creative tourism? The definition developed cooperatively by UNESCO’s Creative Cities is “engaging travelers in a community’s culture through active participation which provides the visitor an authentic experience of a community’s heritage”. The goal is to promote the social, economic, and cultural development of municipalities in both the developed and developing world.

Why did UNESCO choose the city format?

1. Cities harbor the entire range of cultural actors throughout the creative industry chain from the creative act to production and distribution.
2. As breeding grounds for creative clusters, cities have great potential to harness creativity, and connecting cities can mobilize this potential for global impact
3. Cities are small enough to affect local cultural industries but also large enough to serve as gateways to international markets.

Santa Fe holds the distinction of being the only Creative City in the U.S., joining Aswan, Berlin, Bologna, Buenos Aires, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Lyon, Melbourne, Montreal, Popayan, Columbia, and Seville.

I was able to attend the Wednesday session, and in the following days, I will discuss our roundtable on Gastronomy, which attracted delegates from Japan, France, Santiago de Compostela, Barcelona, Bologna, as well as several of us New Mexicans.

In addition, I hope to share with you ideas from a fascinating lunch speaker, Geoffrey Godbey, a specialist on re-positioning of leisure and tourism services for the future.

Stay tuned!

Santa Fe Conference on Creative Tourism

To every avid traveler, there comes a time when home is best. Healing from skin cancer surgeries, I've been a two-month recluse, and I apologize to my readers for my lack of communication. Next week I'll be crawling out of my cave into the light of day--however with a 55 SPF sunblock and a jaunty new Tilley wide brim hat.

The UNESCO Santa Fe International Conference on Creative Tourism will be held September 8-October 2, and I will be on the scene reporting. The program focuses on providing the skills and knowledge necessary for developing creative tourism programs. Attendees will experience practical applications and learn through sessions with some of the world's foremost leaders in the field. Tune in for my take on the proceedings.

Just When It Was Safe to Go Into the Woods...

For your first experience at Geocaching, I suggest you steer clear of timing your trek to coincide with a July mid-afternoon in New Mexico. This cautionary tale is based on sweat, exhaustion, and frustration, all of which could have been avoided with a bit of common sense.

For husband Dick’s recent birthday, our children decided to present their dad with the latest in electronic gadgetry, a Global Positioning System (GPS) unit. After a few auto jaunts with our in-car navigator, we figured we’d give the popular new sport of Geocaching a try.

For those not keeping up with the trends, Geocaching is a seek and find game where participants use a GPS to unearth hidden containers or caches. Locally we have hundreds. A typical cache is a waterproof container, frequently an old Army ammo can, filled with a logbook and “treasure,” usually trinkets or toys. Geocaches are registered on various websites. We downloaded our selected cache’s coordinates from http://www.geocaching.com/.

To make our search easier, we selected to find our cache in the Rio Grande Nature Center, a nearby state park. This year New Mexico Geocachers in cooperation with New Mexico State Parks are celebrating the parks’ 75th Anniversary by placing a cache in each of the 34 state parks. A prize is awarded for cachers completing the entire series by December 31, 2008.

The Rio Grande Nature Center is a serene oasis along the river bosque in Albuquerque. Included on the riverine site are interpretive nature trails, demonstration gardens, a visitors center with numerous exhibits, and a wetland blind overlooking a pond filled with Canada geese, native and migrating waterfowl, a brace of lazy turtles, and in summer a swarm of hummingbirds.

Having worked as a volunteer at the Center, I figured finding this cache would be easy and quick. Experienced cachers would probably have found the exercise easy. We made several mistakes. Not fully understanding the workings of our GPS unit was the first; not taking a supply of water, the second; and walking the trails at noon was the third. We hiked and hiked. Every time we got close to one coordinate, the other was wrong. Finally we stopped and asked a park ranger. He laughed and pointed to the spot where I stood. It was within three feet.

Now we have 1/34th of our list complete. It was fun, but the next time we go Geocaching, we will be sure of our equipment, try to find the place in early morning or evening if in summer, and carry plenty of water.

To round off the day, we drove downtown for lunch at one of the Burq’s top boutique pizza places, Il Vincino. Our shared 12-inch wood-oven-fired Testarosa featured marinara sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni, roasted red peppers, calamata olives, caramelized onions, mushrooms, and fresh oregano, all washed down with big glasses of their in-house brewed root beer.

For a cooling dessert, we walked a couple doors down to Ecco Gelato for a cup of one of their daily 22 flavors. I tried a sample of the strawberry habañero. What a flavor explosion! It starts out smooth and sweet, ending at the back of the palate with a pepper blast. Perhaps the next time I’ll go for the full cup, but that afternoon I settled on fig and orange paired with the honey apricot, an agreeable reward for a day of bushwhacking.

Rio Grande Nature Center, 2901 Candelaria NW, Albuquerque, 87107. Hours: Gate opens, Monday-Sunday, 8 AM to 5 PM; Visitors Center, 10 AM to 5 PM. Admission $3 per vehicle. Leashed dogs allowed only on the path bordered by a fence that extends west from Candelaria NW (guide dogs excepted).

Geocache web site: http://www.geocaching.com/

Il Vicino, 3403 Central Ave. NE, Albuquerque 87106. 505-266-7855. Hours, Sunday-Thursday, 11 AM to 11 PM; Friday and Saturday, 11 AM to midnight.

Ecco Gelato, 3409 Central Ave., Albuquerque 87106. 505-660-4721. Hours, Monday-Thursday, 7 AM to 10 PM; Friday and Saturday, 7 AM to 11 PM; Sunday, 8 AM to 10 PM.

The Mystery of the Hidden Pueblo

Discovering Piedras Marcadas was like finding Machu Picchu in your backyard. I’ve written about Albuquerque’s new Open Space Visitors Center before, but until this past weekend I had no idea they protected treasures like this pueblo as well.

A part of the Petroglyph National Monument, Piedras Marcadas or Marked Stones, was a pueblo occupied between AD 1300 and the mid-1500’s. With three main multi-storied structures and over 1,000 rooms, it is the largest remaining intact pueblo in the middle Rio Grande Valley.

If the pueblo was so large, why haven’t we seen ruins, or why hasn’t it been reconstructed like the pueblo at Coronado State Monument? The answer is part luck and part preservation. In the 1940s and 1950s archaeologists were everywhere in the Rio Grande Valley, digging and hauling artifacts away to museums. At that time Piedras Marcadas was on private land, and the site had only a small home.

By the early 1980s the landowners wanted to develop the land for condominiums. In a forced move, the city purchased the property for open space. Due to the religious connection between the ancient residents and the rich concentrations of petroglyphs on West Mesa, the pueblo was included in the Petroglyph National Monument’s boundaries.

To provide an introduction to the tour, city archaeologist Matt Schmader gave a 45-minute talk on the history of the terrain and the people who inhabited it. We learned paleo-Indians wandered our land as early as 12,000 BP. Before Coronado and his depredations, dozens of pueblos rimmed the Rio Grande.

Our visit was a rare privilege. The location is fenced and locked and open only for special events such as the talk and tour organized by the Visitors Center. As we plowed through a crop of dead weeds, we made our way to the first of three mounds. No foliage grew there. Under a layer of sand, the old adobe walls provide an obstruction to growth. Pot shards, grinding tools, and flint knapped chert covered the ground.

As we walked from area to area, Schmader fielded questions and pointed out exceptional examples of different types of pottery. A frantic killdeer mother scurried this way and that, pretending a broken wing to lure us away from her clutch of four speckled eggs. A metate, abandoned a century ago, rested near a patch of buffalo gourd.

Out of respect for today’s Tiwa people, who are direct descendents of the ancient villagers, new non-invasive methods using electrical current are being used to delineate structures. It is a work in progress. Piedras Marcardas will never be uncovered using the old methods of excavation. It will sleep peacefully under its blanket of sand, safe for further generations.

City of Albuquerque Open Space Visitor Center
6500 Coors Blvd NW
Between Montano Blvd. and Paseo del Norte at the end of Bosque Meadows Rd
Albuquerque, NM
(505) 897-8831
www.cabq.gov/openspace/visitorcenter.html