Place is as elusive as the dawn. It doesn't have an edge, but lifts gradually and infuses us with light. We can see a town or a landscape, but until we open ourselves to its light - letting its rays seep down into our consciousness - we don't really see it, nor do we know it. When I first arrived on the border in the late 1990s, I was too eager to jump to conclusions, and as the poverty of Agua Prieta sidled up against our fence, I sat down to write: Poverty gnaws like a rat at Mexico's very foundation. Cardboard shacks, dirt floors, no running water, wood-burning stoves backed up to paper...