Surrounding a race like this, one that requires togetherness for several days in order to pre-hike the course in two parts, to eat and room together, people loosen their expectations, relax into the nature of coordination by word-of-mouth, and the kind of playful, wrinkled appearance of people deep in rural travel. We are all astonished by the place we see and by the people who are welcoming us with curiosity and so much festivity. We are grateful, even humbled, by their actual warmth, and sometimes by their relative poverty. We struggle to communicate in Spanish, but often settle for gestures of amiability meant to bridge the language gap with friendship.

Unconcerned with all the activity, dogs sleep in the road, on the irregular sidewalks, anywhere at all; doors to the Restaurante Plaza, race headquarters, swing day and night; groups of gorgeous Tarahumara runners, legs and faces smooth and dark as mahogany, arrive at intervals from different canyons ready to eat, sleep, and especially to run; municipal officials and police begin to mill and organize; in the restaurant courtyard, musicians stash an accordion or tuba in a corner below a trailing vine or take up a guitar at the end of a long tableful of food produced in the tiny, constantly churning kitchen, from which vegetarians and carnivoires alike are sated for the equivalent of four dollars a plate. All the town is out along the main street, gathering in front of single-story rectangles that are homes and small shops, each with a door, with a window, and nearly each one a bright color much faded by weather.

Back at home, reading the book, Born to Run had reminded me of the potent experience of the 2007 race week, of North American ultra-runners, some of them elite and world-class, with local, rural Mestizos and indigenous Tarahumara, ditching the class and race distinctions to run and celebrate and respect one another. This was a rare and wonderful experience. It was especially moving during the disgrace of a Bush-Cheney administration back home, the perpetual genocides of the Middle East and Africa, the triple scourge of globalization, cartels and immigration laws on Mexican people.