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| PLAYAS to read text click red squares below |
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| PLAYAS (to return to top of page click blue squares) Though named playas (PLY-yas, Spanish for beaches), the dry lakes that dot the western deserts in the United States and Mexico don't bring the ocean to mind. Most often, these flat, hardened lakebeds are desolate places that seem better suited for otherworldly adventures like landing the Space Shuttle (at Edwards Air Force Base, California) or setting the world's first supersonic land speed record (in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada).  During the last Ice Age, when the climate was much cooler and wetter, most southwestern playas were filled with water—lakes in landlocked drainage basins between mountain ranges. Even Death Valley once cradled a glistening lake. As the climate warmed to today's temperate conditions, lake water evaporated, leaving dissolved minerals behind. Because storm runoff from nearby mountains transports dissolved salts to lake basins below, playas are often thickly layered with salt deposits. Although usually seen as bleak, flat, dry landscapes, playas come to life in the rain. Just one desert downpour can cover acres of a dry lakebed with a thin sheet of water—looking for all the world like a mirage. Willcox Playa in southeastern Arizona hosts thousands of sandhill cranes each winter (24,000 during the 1998-99 season). These four-foot-tall birds roost in the shallow water, safe from coyotes and bobcats, and spend their days foraging on leftovers in nearby cornfields. The lake teems with tiny fairy shrimp, food for thousands of smaller wading birds. In February and March, the cranes venture north again, as far as Alaska, to breed. With the approach of summer, the lake vanishes, appearing only as a mirage until the next rain. WINGS OVER PLAYAS What do NASA's X-38 spacecraft and sandhill cranes have in common? Both land on playas—the X-38 on Rogers Dry Lakebed in California, and the cranes at Willcox Playa in Arizona and at the Muleshoe playas in Texas. The X-38 is a prototype for the International Space Station's Crew Return Vehicle (CRV), a "lifeboat" should an emergency arise on the Space Station requiring rapid evacuation of the crew and their return to Earth. Launched from a B-52 carrier aircraft at about 30,000 feet during test flights, the X-38 soars to the ground beneath a steerable red, white, and blue parafoil. In southeastern Arizona each January, the Willcox Chamber of Commerce sponsors a Wings Over Willcox Sandhill Crane Celebration. The event includes guided birding tours, seminars, and video presentations. When playa lakes at Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge in western Texas are full, they, too, attract thousands of wintering sandhill cranes. Numbers peak between December and mid-February.
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