December
ABOUT TOWN
Favorites of the month from the area’s abundant offerings in art and entertainment
5‘FACE OF WINTER’
Orpheum Theater, 7 p.m. The 69th installment from Warren Miller Entertainment honors the man who started it all. In the film “Face of Winter,” new and veteran athletes pay tribute to Miller, who passed away at age 93 earlier this year. Visit the locales the skierfilmmaker loved the most, and celebrate the thrills of a life lived in high places. General admission is $15. Doors open at 6 p.m.
8 PARADE OF LIGHTS
Downtown Flagstaff, 6 p.m. Join the excitement and watch the streets of Flagstaff light up the winter night as more than 60 floats decorated with thousands of twinkling bulbs make their way through historic downtown. The parade begins at the corner of Beaver and Elm Streets, continues down Beaver to Aspen Avenue, turns left on Aspen and then heads up San Francisco Street to Elm.
13-16 NORTHERN LIGHTS
Sedona, 6-9 p.m. each night Holiday images transform the view of Sedona’s Camelhead Rock in the largest 3D projection project ever to bepresented on a natural canvas. This festive family-friendly event produced by PaintScaping of Los Angeles is free to the public and will be visible from various points in uptown Sedona and Gallery Row. The show begins at the top of each hour. More information at visitsedona.com
14 CAROLS BY CANDLELIGHT
Episcopal Church of the Epiphany, 7:30 p.m. Enjoy an hour of quieter beauty with the Arizona Mountain Chorale and harpist Stephen Hartman of the Phoenix Symphony. Music and readings from a variety of traditions celebrate light and goodness. Program repeats Dec. 15 in Sedona at the Chapel of the Holy Cross at 5 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Free for the Episcopal Church concert. Individual tickets are $40 for the Sedona performances. www.masterchorale.net
31 GREAT PINECONE DROP
Weatherford Hotel, 10 p.m. and midnight Ring in 2019 as a six-foot-tall lighted pine cone falls from the third floor of the historic Weatherford. Fireworks follow this Flagstaff New Year’s Eve tradition. Free.
ONGOING RIORDAN HOLIDAY TOUR
Riordan Mansion State Park, ThursdayMonday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. See this historic American Arts and Craftsstyle home decorated in turn-ofthe-century style with wreaths, garlands, greenery and a towering fir tree trimmed with old-fashioned ornaments. Guided tours occur on the hour and include glimpses of folklore and traditions of Christmas past and present. Admission is $10 for adults, $5 for children age 7-13, free for children 6 and under. Reservations recommended. Call (928) 779-4395.
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Chief Blanket by Clara James (Navajo), $2,400
“Water Yei’I” Sandpainting by Zachariah Ben (Navajo), $245
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Handcrafted natural soap, $6.50 per bar
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Northern Arizona's Mountain Living Magazine
MATTERS OF TASTE
&
The Tortilla Lady Rising Hy Scratch-made favorites with heat and flavor
By Gail G. Collins
B
renda Ramirez stands at the stainless steel counter, her deft hands scooping, spreading, filling and folding. A huge bowl of moist masa sits within reach—the base ingredient for creating dozens of tamales—and stacks of corn husks bundle the completed package. Turning the sticky hominy dough into handfuls of this holiday staple is a series of tasks best shared by extended family, each taking on a physical role in the assembly line, but also fulfilling the role of happy company. It’s a time for chatter about the year just gone and what lies ahead. Hands and hearts are busy, and 14
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the tamalada, or preparation party, is a festive glimpse of the celebration at which the tamales will be the highpoint. Spanish history professors believe that tamales have been filling growling bellies since Pre-Columbian times. Aztec women prepared them and toted the portable handholds into battle to keep the army fed. The tamales were easily heated by burying them in ashes. By the 1550s, tamales were served to Spanish conquistadores, and steaming was introduced as the cooking method. Tamales vary in size, flavor, filling and wrapper, depending on the resources
available, but the laborious process remains one reason they are dedicated to special occasions. One shortcut is to buy ready-made scratch masa from authentic tamale crafters, like The Tortilla Lady, where Ramirez makes tamales year round. “Why tamales?” asked co-owner Mike Konefal, “Because people love them. Stock your freezer with our tamales. They’re always available.” Konefal’s first business venture, Rising Hy Specialty Sauces, began in 2005 in his final year at Northern Arizona University. As a joke, a childhood friend gave him a hot
combined company to grow with our goals,” said Graham. “It’s been a hot mess and a good outcome.” The tortilla team of eight was up to their eyeballs in f lour in a 110-degree kitchen, hand-rolling and stretching 400 dozen tortillas daily. “We’d clean up from that each night, and then, start making hot sauces,” said Konefal. The numerous varieties, which encompass standbys, like honey mustard, and even spices, such as Devil’s Salt, precluded outsourcing the production. Inevitably, the owners expanded the space in 2017, adding a second oven for tortilla making, plus a separate retail space to craft tamales and sauces. Recently, The Tortilla Lady logo was tweaked to ref lect the ongoing venture while honoring the original owner’s profile in the mountain. Rising Hy’s longtime label, a caricature of a college friend with steam shooting from his ears, launched as a graphic design graduation project. “Part of our success is we began
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Northern Arizona's Mountain Living Magazine
THE ARTS
Ă–ngtupqa Celebrating ancient sounds and the Hopi place of emergence By Gabriel Granillo
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Photo by Michael Remke
Öngtupqa was recorded inside the historic Desert View Watchtower.
“Just like a clay pot, the Desert View Watchtower is acoustically superior, more so than most places I’ve ever been.”
T
—Matthew Nelson
he Grand Canyon is many things to many people. To some, it is a sacred, spiritual place. To some, it is a place of billions of years of geological, natural and architectural history. To some, it is a place of eternal beauty, a marvel of myth and mystery. But to all who admire the canyon, it’s a place worth protecting. Preserving its natural features and resources has been an ongoing battle ever since it became a national park in 1919. Through literature, photography, art and activism, the Grand Canyon has long been an enchanting and revered subject. Adding to that list is Öngtupqa. Recorded at the historic Desert View Watchtower, Öngtupqa is an auditory and visual journey celebrating the canyon’s most ancient sounds. “To other people, it’s probably a whole new genre of music. To me it’s not,” says Clark Tenakhongva, who provides vocals and percussion for Öngtupqa, the Hopi name for Grand Canyon that literally translates to “salt canyon.” Tenakhongva’s compositions are relatively new, based on his many expeditions through the canyon and down the Colorado River. They are guided by Hopi tradition and culture passed down generation to generation. As a child, Tenakhongva would listen to his father, uncles and grandfathers sing, and since junior high, he’s been composing music. “Being raised a Hopi, I’ve always been around the culture, and that was the first thing I was exposed to, our songs. So I would say [the music of Öngtupqa is] a revival, probably of what was sung 500 years ago.” Aiding in reviving that traditional sound and rounding out the trio that accomplished Öngtupqa are Matthew Nelson and Gary Stroutsos, who provide clay pot and f lute accompani-
ment, respectively. But the f lutes are not the typical jazz silver ones Stroutsos has been playing for more than 35 years. The f lutes he plays for Öngtupqa are replicas of ancient Hopi long f lutes, unearthed by late archaeologist Earl Morris in the 1930s. Stroutsos says the woodwind instrument dates back to 650, and when he first became aware it, he longed to learn more. That’s when he reached out to friend and fellow musician Nelson. The two researched the instrument and discovered a relation to ancient ceramic traditions, so the decision to use clay pots as a percussive element for Öngtupqa “was kind of just a natural intuition,” says Nelson. “We met Clark and started to learn a little bit more about Hopi culture. What
"[ These songs] honor the Creator and those that have higher powers above any human being. We can't creat wind. We can't creat rain. That's the act of nature." Says Tenakhongva
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Photos by Levi Davis, A Z Camera
he shared was that Native people have used clay pots for everything,” he says. “Carrying water, cooking food, storing grains and making music.” For how effortless and instinctive the trio sounds on the album and live video accompaniment, the musicians had never played together before their recording at the Watchtower, only meeting about a year before. While working at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Tenakhongva says he was approached by Stroutsos with the Hopi f lutes. Tenakhongva had been recording music with Canyon Records in Phoenix but never quite got the opportunity to experiment with his music. He saw Stroutsos’ experience with the ancient f lutes as an opportunity to widen his own musical exploration. Tenakhongva says he felt putting a trio together and recording music in the Watchtower was “ just talk.” Nelson even agrees there was no intention to produce a recording. The group simply wanted to “get in there and play some music, but while we’re there maybe we’ll record it as well, and if we get a good song out of that, wouldn’t it be nice,” he says. They acquired a one-day permit with the National Park Service to play in the Desert View Watchtower at the South Rim of the canyon. The trio brought their equipment, a sound engineer and a videographer. “[Clark] just started singing, and [Gary] started improvising, and I started to follow, and then hours later we had 10 songs,” says Nelson. Designed by architect Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, the Desert View Watchtower was intended to blend in with its environment, creating a seamless transition from where the canyon walls end and the tower begins. Overlooking the canyon, the watchtower provides a phenomenal view of the Little Colorado River Gorge, where Hopi believe they emerged from the third world into the fourth, making it the perfect location to record the music of Öngtupqa. What’s more, the listener might feel there is post-recording, studio magic that creates the dense atmosphere, but it is, in fact, the natural acoustics of the historic structure that provides reverb and sound quality like no other 22
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place can. “Just like a clay pot, the Desert View Watchtower is acoustically superior, more so than most places I’ve ever been,” says Nelson. “The acoustics were just perfect. It was like being inside of a cathedral.” Öngtupqa is a stunning 53-minute audio recording. A 48-minute video complement features beautiful photography, interviews with Tenakhongva on Hopi cultural connections to the canyon and live footage from the Öngtupqa performance inside the watchtower. And while the recording was created as a rebellion against the proposed Grand Canyon Escalade bill, which is now dead, Tenakhongva says protecting the land is still important, and that message in the album and the video hasn’t changed. “I hope it educates people why the Grand Canyon is important to not only the Hopi but all the native tribes here in northeastern Arizona, why we still want to continue the protection of that. … If visitors go there, view [the canyon] with respect, not just to go over there, take selfies and so forth. It’s a spiritual place for us. So go there and be mindful about that.” To purchase the music, or for more information on the artists and Öngtupqa, visit www.ongtupqa.com.
Matthew Nelson, Clark Tenkhongva and Gary Stroutsos of Öngtupqa.
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OUTDOOR LIFE
Wind + Water +
TIME Crafting a visual feast in Antelope Canyon
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Story & photos by Larry Hendricks
We strolled through the canyon with ellow, orange, red and purple. Nature’s groups in front of us and behind us. But we sculptors–wind, water and time–have rarely saw the others because of the pace. From crafted a sunset in sandstone. Cool the starting point, our group would walk, pause, shadows lend shape to the corridor of color as snap photos and gaze around with mouths wide sunlight penetrates the slot between narrow open. People from Germany, Australia, Japan, walls. The hues find a rhythm. They dance. Sweden and the U.S. made up our group, and A visit to Antelope Canyon is a despite the language barriers, we all shared visual feast. glances of acknowledgment that we were seeing As a photographer, I try to book a tour something remarkable. Smiles prevailed. through this natural wonder just east of Daja showed us how the rock formed Page at least once a year, preferably in the shapes that looked like an eagle, a Colorado offseason when there are fewer tourists and sunset, a Native American warrior with a the experience feels a bit more exclusive. As headdress, a woman with her hair blowing far as hikes go, it’s more like a quiet stroll, in the wind, a seahorse and more. Soft, but it’s well worth the experience. Antelope Canyon is divided into two parts: moist sand gave way under our feet as we slowly ascended, scrambling up metal stairs Lower and Upper. I have only been through at points along the way. Conversations were Lower Antelope Canyon, but according to muted and punctuated with exclamations of information about both sites, each has its allure. “oh” and “ah.” The Upper tours have a tendency to be more I couldn’t resist the urge to touch the crowded, though, because the tour is an “out and back” along the same path. The Lower tour sandstone and follow the lines of deposit. I craned my neck and followed the colors up is a “through” tour, which automatically cuts to the light and blue sky. down on the amount of traffic by half. Before we knew it, we were climbing out According to the Navajo Nation, all areas of Antelope Canyon are only accessible onto the surface of the world again, and the tour was suddenly over. We had arrived back by guided tour. Several tour companies in at the building where our journey had started. Page and at the canyon can book a trip. Two days later, I was fortunate enough Prices vary based on length of time and to catch a balloon ride during the Page Lake exclusivity of the experience. Powell Balloon Regatta, and we silently passed I went early in the afternoon on a over Lower Antelope Canyon. From the air, I November day. It was sunny and the light was could see the canyon wind its way through the just overhead, which made the colors in the landscape near Page and exit at Lake Powell. canyon come alive. Tours run every 30 minutes, The magnitude of Mother Nature’s work to and my particular group had seven people. create Antelope Canyon is astounding. Daja, our guide, was very knowledgeable about Wind, water and time. They are the canyon’s formation, and she was able to accomplished sculptors. point out some of the more popular spots to My recommendations for the trip: catch iconic photographs. She even went so Go in the offseason. Prices are lower, the far as to help members of our group find good temperature is cooler and the crowds are angles and the right camera settings. smaller. And, be sure to bring a camera From the main building at Ken’s Tours, with a fresh memory card. You’re bound our group took a short hike along a sandy trail to snap many delightful pictures. to an entry point into the canyon. We held onto metal rails while descending steep stairs to the bottom. At the bottom, Daja talked about What: Lower Antelope Canyon Tour the evolution of the Length: About a mile; one hour sandstone deposit, the Difficulty: Easy, but be careful on the stairs erosion from flooding Price: $37-$50 depending on the season and the creation of Directions: From Flagstaff, head up North Highway 89 for 120 miles the smooth rolling to Page, make a right onto Highway 98. Go 2 miles and make a left onto walls of iron-rich Indian Route 222. Ken’s Tours is on the left about a half mile down the sedimentary rock. road. More information: http://lowerantelope.com
If you go …
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manager Nikki Lober, Christmas was very important to the Catholic family. “Christmas for the Riordan family was about faith and family,” she said. “We have letters that say that a family member would dress as Santa and give gifts out to the children. The Riordans also put on a company Christmas party at which they would also give presents to children. … They would go to church. Christmas was a very big deal for them.” A walk through the home in December conjures up a quiet, peaceful time, and one can imagine family members gathered around the piano singing carols or sitting in the common room admiring their evergreen tree. Although the Riordans were wellto-do, much of their Christmas décor was simple, and a lot of the ornamentation came from the outdoors. “Decorating with fresh greenery was how it was done in those years,” Lober said. The area’s abundant ponderosa pine trees, which the Riordan’s lumber company relied on, offered supply for plenty of wreaths, swags and garland.
Mantels, window sills and tables were adorned with pine boughs and cones, red ribbons and candles and colorful fruit. The Riordan Christmas tree would be decorated with tin, glass and handmade ornaments. Small metal clips held candles to light the tree. Although the Riordans had electricity in their home, they did not have electric string lights, Lober said. Invented in the late 1800s, string lights weren’t widely available until much later and didn’t replace candles on many American Christmas trees until the 1940s. Along with other Christmas trimmings, the Riordan mansion would have contained poinsettia plants. Indigenous to Mexico, the festive red plants were first brought to the U.S. in 1825 by Joel Roberts Poinsett, U.S. envoy to Mexico. According to Lober, the family also marked Christmas with traditional holiday foods and baked goods, including plum pudding and eggnog. To the family’s festivities, Caroline Riordan brought a recipe for Frisco Egg Nog, which is reprinted here as a courtesy of the state park. december18 namlm.com
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EDUCATION THAT WORKS FOR YOU Daniel Rivera went from being a high school drop-out to receiving the Barry Goldwater Scholarship, one of the most prestigious scholarships in the nation. All because he tried out classes at Coconino Community College, where he thrived, to his surpris surprise, in math and science. He graduated, moved on to NAU, and is currently in the mechanical engineering program. “I’m pretty grateful that I tried to experience the real world without an education before I made the decision to come back and get one,” Rivera said. “That made my experience here at CC CCC immensely more valuable.”
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SPOTLIGHT
EmmaWharton Executive Director, Grand Canyon Youth Tell us a bit about yourself. I was born in Salt Lake City and grew up rambling in the mountains and deserts of Utah. I loved playing outside, whether in the treehouse or garden in my backyard or making long road trips with my family. During my senior year of college, I had the opportunity to join a spring break service trip on the San Juan River in southeastern Utah. I fell in love with the river, rowing and the amazing sense of community that develops during a river trip. I’ve also always loved working with young people and in the social service sector. I’ve worked in a residential facility for teens in crisis, a domestic violence shelter, as a park ranger and with community gardens. My master’s degree is in social work, and I wanted to find a way to help build up communities so that young people stayed healthy. How did you end up with Grand Canyon Youth? My good friend happened to see the job posting while Googling “Grand Canyon” before her first private river trip. She called me and said, “Your dream job is online!” I couldn’t believe that there was a job that combined all of my passions. I applied and became the first executive director for Grand Canyon Youth.
How many youths has GCY taken on river trips since its founding? From where have they come? In our 20 years, GCY has served nearly 10,000 youth. While that is remarkable, GCY has never been about quantity. We strive to have the highest quality programs that will have the strongest and most lasting impact on our participants. About half of our guides are GCY alumni. We have alumni who are scientists and educators. We try to serve youths from Flagstaff. That said, we have others come from across the country and even a few international students. GCY runs three kinds of programs: school- or group-based programs, peer support programs such as our Healing Lands for youths who are survivors of domestic violence, and our individual expeditions, where we bring together youth from a variety of backgrounds. What does a river adventure do for young people? So many things! I think my favorites are that it gives them a respite from the onslaught of technology and pressure that comes with being a teenager today. I love watching their youthful playfulness emerge while playing in the mud or having a water fight. It also helps youth to build grit and resiliency as they have to
work to paddle in the wind or make it on a long hike. They are given opportunities for authentic connection with their f loating community. They work together to cook, load the boats, do science and learn. It also can be a really personal experience, where a young person has a chance to experience natural quiet, gaze at the amazing night sky and ref lect on their place in the universe. What’s the ultimate goal of GCY programs? Above all, we hope that our youth take the many lessons they learned while on the river and apply them to their daily lives and be stewards of the rivers and canyons. Do you mostly sit behind a desk? I absolutely sit behind a desk most of the time. But my passion for our mission, connecting young people to the outdoors and creating lasting positive change in the world, keeps me inspired. We also strive to have office staff out on the river at least once per year to connect with what’s happening in the program. Last year, I had the opportunity to make a Grand Canyon river trip that served blind and visually impaired youth as well as sighted youth. It was remarkable to experience the canyon through other senses besides sight. What’s your happy place? My happy place is being anywhere outside—especially on a river. I love being curious about the place, the people I am with and about what I am going to learn about myself. december18 namlm.com
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