To Flee or to Fight

The sun creeps over the mountain ridge, casting its first shadow deep into the canyon – far away in the distance a blur is moving fast with the speed and agility of a Pronghorn. Look closer and you see someone running in a dress?

Photo by Eli Duke/Creative Commons 2.0

When someone invades your country you can flee or you can fight. In the 16th century the Spanish invaded the Americas. The Aztecs and the Maya fought, that didn’t exactly work out for them, the Raramuri or as the Spanish called them, the Tarahumara, fled and hid in the Sierra Madre, home to the Copper Canyons. They were so good at camouflage Cortez and his successors never found them. In the 1890’s the explorer Carl Lumholtz rode past a village without even seeing it.

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The Copper Canyons have always been quite popular with naughty boys, such as Geronimo and a few bandits. Although I’m not quite sure these days if Geronimo was naughty? One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter and all that. 😉

But back to the Taramuhara, boy can these people run, 50-100 miles? No problem.

One of the things that assist them is their diet, they eat a lot Masa Harina which is cornmeal treated with lime (the mineral lime, not the fruit). From this they make Pinole (recipe here). Masa Harina is sold out in the UK, nothing to do with the apocopalypse it’s been like that for a while, so I am still running slowly 😉

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Some say they are the best distance runners in the world, epitomised in Christopher McDougall‘s book Born to Run it’s an interesting debate and they do it all in sandals, eat your heart out Nike 😂

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