Hey, drop that Teflon pan

Typical life of 19th century fur trappers: Trap beavers, sell pelts at a rendezvous, party for two weeks, blow through wad of cash, borrow money to buy supplies, trap beavers to pay off debt. “Mountain men were the freest men who ever roamed the face of the Earth,” says Joe de la Ronde of Glorieta, N.M., who will be among the 1,200 to 2,000 folks experiencing a fur-trading flashback during the weeklong National Rocky Mountain Rendezvous that starts Saturday. To pull off the historical re-creation at a ranch near Dolores, Colo., the event’s booshways (or organizers, a mashed-up derivative of “bourgeois”), mandate period correctness: Anything in plain sight -- clothing, gear, tools (cannons optional) -- must pre-date 1840. Only frontier lodging will do: tepees made of brain-tanned hides or canvas; and wedge, Marquis or similar tents made of white canvas and staked with wooden pegs, preferably chokecherry. “You can’t show up in a Coleman pop-up tent,” says De la Ronde. Most role-players will sleep under skins, though Hudson Bay or Whitney blankets also comply, and cook with cast iron, copper or tin. “No stainless-steel frying pans or Teflon griddles,” says De la Ronde, a blacksmith who brings self-made replicas of tomahawks, axes and knives to the annual event. Why the 1840 cutoff? That’s when prized fur that had been fashioned into shiny top hats for upper-class Easterners fell out of favor and killed the mountain rendezvous. “Silk was easier and cheaper to produce. ... Basically, [the trappers] were run out of business,” De la Ronde says. Go to www.rmnr.org.