In August, we perform a ceremonial ritual and fiesta to Pachamama in the north of Argentina, Chile, southern Peru and Bolivia in the Andean region. The ceremony begins by finding a space where you can open a "mouth" in the earth, and this native Andean cultural ritual is often done in synch with the Catholic religion. In the month of August Catholics in this region also celebrate the Virgin and make devotions by opening a "mouth" in the earth to make the offering.

In a recent conversation with a friend, Glacier National Park in Montana came up for discussion. And my friend informed me that the glaciers were melting and would disappear shortly, adding for emphasis that the entire earth would be inundated within a few short years of the Glacier Park meltdown.

It is true the glaciers in the Park have been receding for many years, but I have vivid memories of how stunning the area looked during my last visit in 1974 while I was still a student at the University of Montana. The Park was beautiful and the vistas from Going to the Sun Road were breathtaking. My indian friend Dan (Cherokee mother, Italian father) and I drove up to Kalispell from Missoula in a beat up old International Travelall van that I had at the time, fishing all the way into the Park. Dan was tying his "famous" black ants on the spot, trying different variations to emulate what we were seeing on the water for fly fishing. We hardly caught a thing, but we were drinking and carrying on, not seriously fishing.

I had a dark cherry cordial yesterday. I eat them wherever I find them, a hopeless addict! My local chocolatier sells their handmade version with the stem in, but the cherry is pitted and the filling does not have liqueur, which is the norm in the U.S. In Argentina, even commercially produced dark cherries have the pit in and are swimming in liqueur. You have to be careful how you eat them.

YouTube clips from La Comida Aborigen. Click the image below. Use Closed Captioning for English.