Invitation to danger Highway 2 from Agua Prieta snakes eastward along the border until it meets the looming blue shadow of the first Sierra Madre ridge. The query includes destination, where you came from, your basic intentions and your general attitude. Fortunately or not, they prefer not to be seen. Before you and between mountain ridges is an esplanade. It is soulfully beautiful - maybe more so than any other you've seen in your safe American tourist world.
Spaces are vaster, the mountains are deeper and craggier and of deeper shadow and hue.
The plains, unforgiving as they may be, are soft pools of green and gold. Muy valientes, very brave. The land is still in a time warp, just as 150 years ago when Apache marauders dwelled here or when Villa unleashed his reign of guerrilla terror upon landowners and anybody else opposed to him. The town of Janos, just west of north-south Highway 10, is a dusty truck stop. In Apache days there was a fort there during the conflict between the Indians, who holed up in the impassable pockets of the Sierra Madre, and their natural enemy, Mexican ranchers.