What Creatures Will Roam Glen Canyon?
When I stop at a gas station to stretch my legs under a blue sky, I notice some homes, wooden fences and a few trees. I ask the blonde teenage attendant what town I am. Her expression and reply made the question feel somehow forbidden. “Hilsdale,” she mutters, looking away.
The town name doesn’t immediately ring a bell, but the presence of trees, shrubs, those fences – might make this a good spot to check for any new species of birds I had never seen before. The Utah-Arizona border, north of the Grand Canyon and east of Las Vegas, is a weird sort of biological zone. Some creatures exist here that exist nowhere else in the world. More likely though, a little town amidst all this dry scrub and red earth might attract some migrating birds, moving south to Mexico or Southern Arizona in the fall.
