I was going through some digital photos and found this one I’d forgotten about. This is taken in the afternoon in Cerocahui, Mexico. We’d arrived via the Sierra Madre Express train and then been driven into this incredible classic Spanish-style hotel. Fat fragrant roses, thick tiles, real wood, smooth stucco walls and a little fireplace in our shadowy room. This Mexican cowboy was braiding himself a new leather rope.

It was a great trip into the Copper Canyon with our effervescent guides Jim Moline and Anne Brehm-Moline.  They took us to visit an all-girls boarding school, where the Tarahumara Indians send their children. Distances are too great, and settlements too sparse, to really do it any other way. The girls wore pleated skirts made with fantastical-floral prints. Pleats, we found out later, pressed by an old-fashioned iron that was heavier than several cast iron skillets. Their shoes looked like Roman sandals; with handmade leather strips wrapped snug around their ankles.  

The girls were shy, yet reached for our hands to proudly show us their dorm rooms. Identical pink princess beds in straight rows, ten to a side.  When they lined up and began singing to us, I wanted to cry.

Why are children so heartbreakingly beautiful?