New Horizons

Photo credit: Tyler Tomasello

As runners and Mas Locos, we’ve all had our lives changed by one, or more, trip(s) to the Copper Canyons of Mexico. The remoteness, the authenticity and the culture have charmed, inspired and taught us so much. It has made us better in many ways, and shown us the true power of Korima.

Like our friends in the Barrancas, Norawas de Raramuri has navigated many challenges as an organization. From its inception to support Micah’s dream and actions to its revival in 2012, all the way to this very day, our group has had a single driving principle: channel our friends’ financial support to our other friends in the Copper Canyons. 

Over the years, you have helped us provide tens of thousands of dollars to purchase the food vouchers awarded at every Caballo Blanco Ultra Marathon. You have supported the amazing Caballo Blanco Trail Project, which now spans all the way up and beyond the Canyon of Urique, reviving an ancestral pathway used for generations. You have contributed to the wonderful kid’s race, la Carrera De Los Caballitos, that now attracts hundreds and hundreds of happy, excited youngsters to the streets of Urique to celebrate health and running. You have supplied schools with material and supported health care intiatives, most of which I oversaw personally, in the field. As a group, as One, we can be proud of what has been achieved and of the vast movement of kindness that has reached the bottom of the Canyons.

2015 marked an important change of context for the race, for the Mas Loco runners and in no small way for the Urique community as well. Out of a tragic initial event, an idea sprouted that the local people could take over the organization of the race and see to its perenniality. This idea is empowering, beautiful, and ultimately a logic step in the life of Ultra Marathon Caballo Blanco.

In 2016, we were witness to the very first, locally-managed UMCB and it showed without any doubt how much love and dedication the Urique people have for the event. I know they are hard at work right now preparing the next one, and many of us will be running it with great enthusiasm.

This change in context has redefined many things, among which the role Norawas de Raramuri can play in the future and my personal role in the organization. We spent some time thinking about it and as the flow of events unfolded, we have come to the conclusion that it is no longer the best outlet to show our support in the Copper Canyons.

Although Norawas will issue its own official statement about how it will manage the remaining funds and see to their distribution, I wanted to take this occasion to announce I am stepping down from my role as a board member and to personally thank you, our supporters, our family. You are in the thousands. I can’t count the number of times I was told by our friends in the Canyons how much they appreciated the help of us “gringos” :) These thanks go directly, rightfully to you.

I will, of course, keep being involved with the Raramuri and the Copper Canyons through other venues and I’m committed for life to keep living Caballo Blanco’s vision of creating peace at the bottom of the canyons using the simple, humble act of running. It is also no longer a secret that I am part of a wonderful new initiative, Mas Korima, to which I will devote my time, resources and efforts to develop a direct business partnership with our Raramuri friends. It’s a bold, new idea that I strongly believe in and I want to fully devote to.

In the meantime, I personally invite you all to join us in Urique on March 6 for another celebration of beauty and connection and I also invite you to follow – and join - us in our future Copper Canyons endeavors.

Much love,

Flint

The First Day of Mas Korima

Today is a very important day.

First of all, I woke up in one of my favorite houses in one of my favorite places in the world. I went for a quick run around the neighborhood, surrounded with desert mountains. I also exchanged funny, quirky, lovely little messages with The Dragonfly, which reminded me the incredible luck I have that she's in my life.

I am a grateful man, for all the beauty that's in my life.

Today is already excellent, but it's also about to get downright exceptional. We are gathering our things and getting prepared to head to Fountain Hills, Arizona, at the Javelina Jundred site to officially launch Mas Korima, a dream we've been working on for over a year now.

We're starting something new., something good. We will use the workings of consumer marketing to bring excellent heritage nutrition products to the endurance world, which in turn will directly benefit our Raramuri partners and their communities, who provide the heirloom corn, ancient knowledge and labor that make the products so unique, wholesome and healthy.

Athletes and supporters will not only get access to the best natural endurance food from the Running People of the Copper Canyons, they will contribute to their livelihood, well-being and empowerment at the same time. Good food, good deeds, good will. The perfect circle.

By turning to a profit-based business model, we work with our friends as equal partners and we help them deal with the unavoidable modernity that's closing in to their homes. They get to decide how the crops are produced and handled and they are responsible to build the local network of people involved in the operations. They get to use their values, heritage and culture to guide the way of a real-world business, on their own terms. They face the same issues, questions and challenges that every starting company has to deal with, and we are here to support them and learn from this incredible adventure as a working group, a community.

And this is where I get so incredibly excited about Mas Korima. It's a new model, an idea based on equality. It's an opportunity to support and be taught, to face adversity and meet success, to make decisions and influence everyone's future in a respectful, humble and positive way. This is a chance to make a real difference.

You, me, Mas Korima, our Raramuri friends. Our way to live by the value of sharing, to create a powerful circle for positive change.

A Homecoming

Standing at the UMCB 2016 starting line, I felt like I had been catapulted into this moment through a whirl of events which started 4 years ago, when I showed up in Bauichivo, dusty, tired and absolutely amazed only to stumble onto Caballo Blanco and have my life changed forever.

With a single color bracelet at my wrist, I contemplate the extent of the day ahead of me, but quickly wipe that thought and concentrate on what matters; the sun will shine in the Barrancas today, I'm here and so are my friends.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and we are off in a crazy cavalcade, as always, through the early cheers of excited Uriquenses standing on their porches in the early light of a new Canyon's day. I take a couple of weary steps, and everything suddenly falls into flow. I'm a the right place, and this is the right time. It's all going to work out exactly as it's supposed to.

I don't know exactly where this chain of events started. Is it when my brother Dan gave me that book, or when I could't just finish it, put it down and go on with my life, and went online looking for the Raramuri? Is it when I got down from the train and ended up drinking a beer with Micah True 15 minutes later, or when he left me and all my new Mas Loco family to go run with the Elders forever?

All I know is I found myself surrounded with a handful of close friends in a human ocean of Raramuri runners, and that all was right in the world again.

La Plaza, the day before the race

I'll never really know what the Canyons folks really think of us weird gringos and our crazy ideas. What I do know is that they had a twinkle in their eyes this year, and a palpable excitement to see us that felt genuine and almost overwhelming. Sweeney, Tyler, Mike, Muldonado, Kimberly, Tony, everyone was called by name and cheered on like the long-awaited return of a family member. Even Raramuri families on the side of the road seemed to forego their legendary shyness and shouted "Weriga!" for me, something I had never witnessed before.

The miles started piling and my excitement didn't fade. It seemed like everyone shared a little extra friendship, a little extra joy of seeing that no matter what happened before, we were all still here, we were all still running together and we were all, as it always will be, one.

I don't know if it was because so few of us had showed up, but the Raramuris and the local runners showed heartwarming hospitality and shared the trails with large smiles and nods of approval at every corner. I ran some sections with women, who usually step out of the trail at the first sign of a chabochi, looking down or away in silence. With a smaller group of younger Raramuri girls, we even joked about the fact that a faster girl and me, who ended up progressively passing them, were a weird pair with my huaraches and her running shoes. It looked like we were all just a big family out on a long run together, and it was a fantastic feeling.

Coming out of my first stop in Urique, I stumbled upon two very young boys from town, who told me they had been training and preparing for months to be able to run the race. I grinned from ear to ear and congratulated them on their achievements. We shared a good section of the way to Guapalayna, until they decided to take a break away from the rising heat.

The aid stations were filled with happy, giggling teens very eager to help and offer us fruits, pinole and abundant water. There were teams of Red Cross volunteers everywhere, ready to step in and help out struggling runners even on the way out to Los Alisos, far away from the closest road. One of the unit chiefs, a young girl all decked in her Red Cross uniform and vigorously hiking the trails under the burning sun, cheered me on and made sure I was all right before giving me a little slap on the butt and shouting "andale!" which gave everyone, myself included, a good laugh.

As always, showing up half-dead in Los Alisos and being revived by Prospero and his team was a high point of my day. Seeing our friends so busy and dedicated to the race was both humbling and heart-warming, and the hugs and cheers at the end of the trail gave me energy to keep going and reminded me of the importance of what we were doing; we were showing our friends that we love them, the Barrancas and this event, in whatever shape of form it takes.

No matter how hard the day went, people everywhere went out of their way to help out, from that police dude in Guapalayna who literally showered me with a bucket of water to the young girls in La Laja who sat me down and gave me an awesome leg rub with a local analgesic pomada, all the way to that lovely young woman on my last way out of Guadalupe, who popped open a Tecate for me, offered a couple sips and assured me her boyfriend wouldn't kill me if I gave her a kiss. So I gave her two :)

My Oso's and my colors :)

Absolutely everything went as well as I had hoped, and even better. My Raramuri friend Javier placed 7th overall in the race, smashing his previous record and finishing ahead of some legendary runners despite a pretty bad cramping bout on his last stretch. Tarzan Tyler had an amazing run and finished first gringo under a thunder of cheers. All the Mas Locos in our caravan finished their runs and crossed the line with a lot of emotion, as some were experiencing this for the first time. No matter where you were in Urique, UMCB 2016 brought joy, excitement and a whole lot of positivity.

I managed to have an about-12-hour overall run, which I am very satisfied with. After a rather demanding stretch from Los Alisos almost all the way up to Guadalupe, I pumped myself full of the gels my friends had scrambled for me in Urique and pulled a pretty impressive last 5K, catching up with my friend Muldowney and finishing in daylight, exhausted but filled with joy.

The Urique government did an amazing job at organizing the event, from super-well-staffed aid stations to the 100% local cultural program. They pulled a world-class event pretty flawlessly, providing food and camps for the Raramuri runners as well as cash prizes and food vales like has now become tradition.

Like every year, I left Urique too soon, my head filled with memories and my heart filled with the pride of knowing that Ultra Caballo Blanco is in good hands with the people of the Barrancas, that it will go on for a long time in the future and that I, for sure, as always, will be back in the beautiful Copper Canyons as soon as I get the chance.

I kept my 5 colors on my wrist like a trophy up until today, not so much for the running achievement, but as a reminder of the love, friendship and peace we helped create.

I will be back in 2017 and I'm sure that I won't be alone. Until then, I have a year's worth of daydreaming and memories to cherish and a ton of new projects with my friends who live in the Barrancas, the home I will always love coming back to.

Moldonado, friends, and me, sharing
a celebratory cold drink at the finish line

Back From The Barrancas

I had a weird summer, you know. Between hard personal decisions and a nagging little injury, my spirit was weighed down by many thoughts and questions. A lot of those gravitated around a place I love, a place I had come to consider a second home; Urique. I spent many moments wondering how my friends were doing, how the overall situation was and about what the future would hold for this running paradise.

So when the opportunity arose for me to travel back down to the Barrancas, even though for a very short trip, I packed my bag in a heartbeat.

On the road with a truckload of giggling chicas :)

Ever since Michael Miller and I drove out of Urique with heavy hearts, we both swore we would be back no matter what. As the year was slowly nearing its end, Michael told me he had received some positive news from the other side of the border and that there was a window of about a week where not only we could go, but we would also be joined by our good friend Patrick Sweeney, who’d just finished another awesome feat of endurance by running the Chicago Marathon, then running to New York City and running the NYC Marathon as well, Forrest Gump-style.

The positivity started from the get-go. Seeing Sweeney was a real treat, and getting to road trip with two of my best running friends put a huge smile of my face. Even though we red-eyed it all the way, there was still room for happy-hour shenanigans, breathtaking runs and hot pepper shopping.

Beautiful morning run atop Creel

Everywhere we looked, traversing Mexico’s northwest from the Arizona border all the way down to Creel, things seemed pretty quiet and relax. There was only a single roadblock on the whole way, which can only mean that things have cooled down quite significantly.

The magic of the Canyons started for me as soon as we reached Mario’s cabins, nested on a magnificent promontory in San Isidro, where our Raramuri friend Horacio was waiting to take us on an evening run to the rim. Although I have traveled to many places in the Sierra, the canyon top is one of the places I have been the least so I was delighted to discover the trails that lead to Cerro Gallego, the Urique overlook, as well as the gorgeous creek trail that descends into the village of Porochi, where both Miguel and Horacio live. We came back at sunset, just in time for drinks by the bonfire Mario had lit for us. It was perfect.

Cabañas San Isidro, our friend Mario's gorgeous ranch

We set out the next morning, on foot, and descended unto Urique through rugged, ancient trails that are sometimes etched into the boulders by centuries of travel. I was shocked at the amount – and steepness! of the climbs that lead to the rim before the descent begins. On the way, Horacio was generous with information on local farmsteads, connecting trails and meaningful landmarks. Our spirits were high and we felt how specially meaningful it was for us all to be coming again to Urique, on foot, together, using the ancient trails of the People we respect and celebrate.

On the way down to Urique

After a rather difficult hike, we emerged in Urique to the symbolic chant of mourning doves. It brought me a sense of peace and closure, and a strong feeling of being back home. We met with our friends in the government and exchanged meaningful words, united in wishing to perpetuate the running tradition Caballo Blanco created.

Walking to the gate at Entre Amigos almost brought tears to my eyes. The place looks as beautiful as ever, and our friends Maruca and Tomas were waiting for us, all smiles, like they were welcoming their own family. Seeing that beautiful garden once again, and the trees loaded with fruits, was a true joy.

And just when things couldn’t get any better, our friend Prospero and his wife Sabina showed up to give us great news about the Caballo Blanco Trail Project and share even more ideas for the future.

We will be back, Barrancas!

Of course, things are not perfect in the Barrancas. They never were. There are crimes committed frequently all over the Sierra. The people’s struggle with violence is very real and must not be forgotten. But as things stand right now, relative peace appears to have returned, people are back to their daily occupations, and life seems to go on.

Although the race we’ve known and loved will now be an event organized and promoted by Urique, as a runner and as a friend of the Running People, I will be back in March. And so will others.

And that’s a really good thing.



You can follow our work at Norawas de Raramuri on our official website, www.norawas.org