Most trails in Mexico are undeveloped. They were made—perhaps many centuries ago—by ordinary people trying to get from one place to another.

Throughout history, a few gifted individuals have turned momentous events into epic poems. We have the “Iliad,” the “Odyssey,” the “Epic of Gilgamesh”—and now, “Aztec Rhapsodies.”

Many years ago, I stumbled upon a hidden pool fed by a cold spring, the source of a bubbling stream of clear, clean water, all shaded by the most magnificent trees imaginable: enormous, stately, ancient Montezuma cypresses—sabinos in Spanish, though still popularly known by their Nahuatl name ahuehuetes, or “old men of the water.”

When digital books are mentioned, many people roll their eyes.

Mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, camels, bison, glyptodons and massive, five-ton sloths once roamed what is now Mexico.

The Lerma River originates in the State of Mexico, flows into Lake Chapala, and then emerges as the Río Santiago.