Our first trip to Mexico was in 1968 in a VW bus. My husband, my small daughter, Heidi, and I were off into what was, for us, the unknown…

After 40 years of driving to Mexico, things change, and for some reason on this trip I was aware of all the landmarks on the way…

Behind a massive clunker of a leather chair, I see a flash of white…

A woman wearing a white apron circulates with a feather duster, flapping at the dust that continues to filter in from the courtyard. My eyes tell me it is a losing battle…

Our 1985 visit to a Oaxacan outdoor market just before Day of the Dead was like stepping through a time warp…

Out strides Pepito, cocking his head and hopping down to the tabletop. He looks sleek and well-fed, his eyes bright like glass beads…

He lies on a pile of dirt in the middle of the cobbled street, soaking up the warmth of the stones as the evening cools…

The shadows have deepened, and the late afternoon rays of the sun slant across the peaks of the Sierra Madre Mountains, washing the village in honeyed light…

The señora sets steaming bowls of champurrada in front of us. I peer at the brown, viscous surface, taking in the rich smell of cornmeal and chocolate…

Interrupting my musings, a young Mexican girl of about eleven rounds the corner, pressing herself into the space next to me…

As I walk along the streets of Mexico City, I sometimes imagine the valleys between the towering gray buildings are being cut by the tides of people who flow through them…

“Solo silbar, no hace mulero.” Just because you can whistle doesn’t mean you’re a mule driver, he replies…

Sad and frantic, his ears blowing back in the wind, he was a living bow sprit on the asphalt sea…

The Mexicans call them “policía durmiendo,” sleeping policemen. We creep forward, coming to a virtual stop as the front wheels hit the slope and we begin to climb…

When the negotiations were complete, an attendant drove up in our Ford Fiesta—bright purple, my favorite color. A good omen, we decided…

We entered the building, walking past the guard at the front gate. A guard? Why do chickens need a guard? We were about to find out…

They march three or four abreast, thousands of bodies in a continuous, undulating river. Directly in front of me, a tributary from the main stream slips silently over the white plastic seat of the toilet…

As Gary and I walk along the trail high on the side of the dry yellow hills of Oaxaca, I hear a dog barking in the valley below. I dismiss it, as we are well out of reach…

As the waves roll in and out, they rake the surface of the sand, revealing objects, both natural and man made, that have come to rest at this intersection of land and sea…

The shadow moves more rapidly than I expect, the dark line of false twilight advancing towards us across the fields like ink moving through water…

The late afternoon sun washes across my perch as I lie on my stomach on the warm tiles, head hanging out over the street two stories below…