The Gift of Fire and Snow

At Painted Warriors Ranch, visitors rediscover their relationship with the land and learn from the owners' traditional Indigenous knowledge

By Izabela Jaroszynski

On this stretch of land, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains northwest of Calgary, snow settles into the folds of the land, enveloping the evergreens, muffling sounds and sharpening the cold air. Here, winter days are often clear and sunny.

"I really love winter," says Tracey Klettl, who owns Painted Warriors Ranch along with her partner Tim Mearns. "It is so peaceful and, if you're dressed for it, it's beautiful to be outside."

Painted Warriors Ranch offers cozy rental cabins and outdoor experiences on a sprawling property, with trails through forest corridors of pine, spruce and poplar. Visitors come to connect with the natural world through year-round, land-based programs that last anywhere from one to five days. Horseback riding, archery, animal tracking, and fire-making are all core to the outdoor program.

Tracey and Tim, both of whom are Indigenous, guide the programming in tune with the land and their ancestral teachings.

"From the start, it was important for us to stay connected to the land because of the knowledge it holds, the gifts that are out there," Tracey says.

Winter is when those teachings come into sharpest focus.

Snow settles thickly across the trails, sometimes crisp underfoot when the temperatures drop, sometimes soft and wet when the weather shifts. Each step in the snowshoes sends a muffled crunch into the quiet air. Overhead, the forest stands still, broken only by the occasional chatter of chickadees or the heavy wingbeat of a crow.

Before the group moves far, Tracey begins with the snowshoes themselves, lifting them in her hands as she explains the shapes refined by different Indigenous communities: the long, canoe-like forms used in open terrain, the rounded bear-paw styles better suited to dense forest. Guests ultimately use modern snowshoes, with grippy undersides that handle slick patches, but the introduction roots everyone in the deeper lineage of the tools.

Once everyone steps onto the trail, the quiet work of noticing begins.

“The snow tells us so many things,” Tracey says. Its texture hints at recent storms or warm spells; its surface holds the clear imprints of animals that passed hours or even minutes earlier. Guests learn to read not just which species left the track, but how quickly it was travelling and how long ago it moved through.

Winter strips the landscape back to essentials, revealing what remains constant beneath the cold. In that pared-down quiet, guests begin to understand why Tracey teaches these skills and why she returns to them each winter: they are practical, yes, but they also reconnect people with a way of moving through the world that depends on attention, respect and relationship.

The snowshoe walk eventually circles back toward a small clearing, where the cold seems to settle a little deeper in the still air. This is where Tracey teaches what she considers one of the most essential winter skills: building a fire from what the land provides.

She begins by guiding guests to the materials themselves.

“If you were in a situation where you had to get a fire going, you need to understand what the correct material is to go and gather, and where you find it,” she says. These gifts from the land are vital for outdoor survival.

“Anybody who’s ever been cold and needs to get that fire going understands that it becomes the most important gift that you can gather.”

When the materials are ready, Tracey invites guests to try lighting their own fire.

“It’s amazing,” Tracey says. “When you’re physically doing it instead of just being told, then you really understand what that gift is that the land is giving you.”

The pride is unmistakable. Something as basic as fire-making — once a universal skill — now feels both unfamiliar and deeply empowering.

“Lighting a fire is the best skill you can have,” she tells them. “It’s the one that will save your life.”

Tracey and Tim, owners of Painted Warriors Ranch

Tracey’s understanding of winter skills comes from a deep lineage. She is a descendant of the Cree and Mohawk people from the area now known as Jasper National Park, where she grew up "running in the bush" as she puts it, and learning practical land-based knowledge from her family. Her grandmother was a respected medicine woman, and Tracey often references her knowledge when showcasing plants on the land.

Tracey's partner, Tim Mearns, is Saulteaux and a member of the Cote First Nations. Together, they bring a lifetime of outdoor experience — archery, riding, hunting and wilderness training — to the programs at Painted Warriors, shaping each outing with a blend of ancestral teachings and modern instruction.

One of the newer programs that Tracey is excited to showcase is a photo trapline. Guests are taught skills such as fire lighting, knot-tying shelters and putting up a tarp shelter.

"As they acquire skills, they get bait. The bait is not for a trapline but for cameras. They set up a camera trap with a little bit of bait, and then the next day, we snowshoe out and gather the SD cards and see what they 'caught.'"

Inside the cabins at Painted Warriors Ranch

Tracey says that visitors, especially if they are international guests, are often blown away by the vastness of the land (Painted Warriors Ranch sits on 82 acres, with access to an additional 80), and the peacefulness of the surroundings.

There’s something about winter, Tracey says — the quiet of it, the way it asks people to slow down — that lets visitors go deeper into themselves.

Out on the land, away from the ease of stores and pavement and instant solutions, people begin to sense what life once required and what it still has to teach. That’s often when the conversations shift.

Many guests arrive eager to understand Indigenous perspectives, and Tracey meets them where they are, using the “universals,” as she calls them, to show how everyone is connected to the land and to one another. Others arrive with misconceptions, but she welcomes those moments, too. They become opportunities for honest dialogue, for clearing away false assumptions, for letting people see differently.

“Anyone who’s come out,” she says, “one hundred percent of the time they’ve left with a different mindset.”

In the stillness of winter, surrounded by snow and open space, that change feels both possible and profound.