The Chiricahua Mountains in southeastern Arizona are one of the nation’s great gathering places. Human travelers from all over come to these scrubby mountains, particularly in spring and fall, to glimpse visitors from farther south: trogons, chunky tropical birds that are the spectacular quetzal’s only slightly less spectacular relative, as well as ring-tailed cats and jaguars, wild creatures seemingly dreamed up in a fever. The animals get here by crossing open desert, fields and the international border, hopscotching between similar “sky islands” throughout Northern Mexico and southern Arizona.
From the North, you reach the Chiricahuas by passing through a dramatic gap in the rocks, where the aptly named town of Portal is. You go from sprawling, dusty fields frequented by Border Patrol into a tight canyon covered with trees, dotted with log cabins and split by the south fork of Cave Creek. It’s one of the West’s gathering places, yes, but also one of its strange interfaces between vastly different ecosystems and ways of life.
Today, this area faces a massive change. The northwestern flanks of the mountains with their precariously stacked rock towers are already a national monument. On Oct. 20, President Donald Trump signed a bipartisan bill into law to redesignate the monument as a national park, marking the first new national park created under his second presidency. The new designation could attract more visitors than these quiet mountains have seen in a very long time.
A few weeks ago, a reporter called me from near Portal to talk about a story he wanted to pursue. He was on vacation in the canyon and mostly out of cell service but had still heard rumors that a significant piece of land, hundreds of miles away, was up for sale. When we spoke, I found myself briefly catapulted out of my late-afternoon life in southern Montana. Instead, I was with him by the cool waters of Cave Creek, thinking about the future of these dry lands, trying to recall the names and numbers of Southwestern sources who might know more.
Sometimes I imagine the work of High Country News as that of a spider, busily connecting far-flung land-bound communities with a web of fragile threads. It’s a rare privilege to be able to tie together places as far apart as southwestern Montana and southeastern Arizona. Other times, though, I see our work as an absurd game of telephone, passing what we hear about the changes in one place to another, just so their inhabitants can learn and be ready in case those changes come for them. Sometimes, we forecast the change, and sometimes it catches us unawares.
We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
