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Over 150 people gathered at the Babbish Gulch Trailhead near Sunlight Mountain on Saturday to cut their own Christmas trees and celebrate with a Latino holiday party called a “Posada.”
The bilingual, bicultural event is organized each year by the U.S. Forest Service’s Aspen-Sopris Ranger District and Wilderness Workshop’s Latino-led environmental advocacy program, Defiende Nuestra Tierra (Defend Our Land).
The gathering in the mountains outside of Glenwood Springs is a chance for English and Spanish-speaking residents to come together to learn about their public lands in the Thompson Divide area, eat tamales and harvest a tree.
“I think both cultures are learning from each other, I mean it’s just another great excuse to gather and have good times with your family and friends,” said Omar Sarabia, the director of Defiende Nuestra Tierra.
“We hope people make that connection with our public lands and the federal agencies who manage it, and learn more about how we can preserve this beautiful place,” he said.
In Sarabia’s native country of Mexico, and other parts of Latin America, Posadas are celebrated before Christmas to honor Mary and Joseph’s journey from Bethlehem to Nazareth in search of a place for baby Jesus to be born.
A main component of the celebration is asking for a posada, or a place to rest.
“When you give Posada to someone, it’s like, ‘You can stay in my place’ — it’s a tradition of hospitality,” Sarabia said.
For many the annual gathering is the first time they have harvested a tree in the forest.
Silt resident Mayra Rodelas, who is originally from Chihuahua, Mexico, cut her first Christmas tree at the event three years ago, and this year, she brought her four kids with her.
“I never did this when I was a kid and the first time it was amazing. My kids say, ‘Why don't you buy in Walmart?’ And I say, ‘No,’” Rodelas said. “Sometimes they get tired, looking for the perfect tree, but I say, ‘It’s not not about the tree, it’s the family memory for us and I love it.’”
Rodelas’ youngest daughter, six-year-old Mariana, said she would’ve chosen a different Christmas tree than her older brothers picked out this year, but she still had fun.
“What was your favorite part?,” I asked.
“Um, laying in the snow while my brothers cut down the tree,” Mariana replied. “And I like to decorate the whole house and tree.”
Standing by the U.S. Forest Service table, Iris Salamanca helped hand out tree-cutting permits, hand saws and provided instructions in Spanish.
Salamanca previously worked for the Bureau of Land Management in Grand Junction where she helped Aspen fire officials translate prescribed burn alerts in Spanish last year. Now she’s the new Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) Information Assistant for the White River National Forest.
Saturday’s Posada was an opportunity for her to get to know the community and to help increase access to public lands.
“I get to kind of say who I am and talk to them in Spanish and just let them know, ‘I'm here to provide you guys with information. I'm here so you guys know that you are welcome, that these are your public lands too,’” Salamanca said. “So it's breaking those barriers and letting them know that they can get their Christmas tree in the National Forest.”
Increasing equity in the outdoors is personal for Salamanca, who grew up in a Spanish-speaking family in Los Angeles without a lot of interaction with public lands or the agencies that manage them.
“I had never been inside of a Forest Service office, never been inside a Bureau of Land Management office because my family, you know, my parents, they knew that was a federal agency or a federal building and that's all they had to know to not want to approach it, not to mention my first language was Spanish,” she said. “But I always had a thing for animals and the outdoors and I just, something about it always called to me.”
The White River National Forest is the most visited in the country, and Salamanca wants to build on local efforts to offer more information in a variety of frequently used languages, including Spanish.
“There's like a 40% Latino population here in the area, but it's not represented in the visitors to the National Forest,” she said. “And so my job is really to engage this community and to show them and educate them about, ‘What are our public lands, what can we do in our public lands, and what a resource it is’ — it's such a beautiful resource.”
In the coming year, Salamanca will start developing new DEIA initiatives and programs for the U.S. Forest Service, including leading snowshoe tours and ecological hikes in Spanish.
Information about tree-cutting permits as well as where and how to harvest a Christmas tree is available in both Spanish and English on the website, Recreation.gov.
