Mmmmmm.....pancakes! Bet you can't guess where we're going today, boys and girls. What? You've never been to Arizona's big pancake in the desert? You've never heard of the Wilcox playa? You say you don't even know what a playa is? Well, now, we're just going to have to do some ed-yoo-kayt'n here!
PLAYAS
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.
