"Hoped to get a signal on Condor 11. She’s been gone 48 days, and I’m having no luck. I’m getting 14, 19, 23, 34, 36 and 49 to the East South East." -- Kirk Stodota 5/7/00 Mt. Trumbull peak register.

I travel to the southeast of Mt. Trumbull through the pinon and juniper forests. A large black bird soars over a long hill as I pass cattle ponds. A huge bird. Far too big for a raven and with flexible wings unlike that of a turkey vulture. I drive closer. It soars my way. It has a large fan tail and a reddish glow on the leading edge of its wings. I can clearly see a light colored beak and light colored feet. A condor. No mistaking it. In the gusts, it readjusts its wide wings. My thin dust plume ascends to it. I imagine it blinking, a huge soaring machine, just a little irritated with me. Sorry, noble bird. We have heaped enough upon your struggling airframe. Forgive one extra slight, if you can..

I stop and watch it fight the gusts. It circles back, then turns abruptly again, heading southwest. Somewhere clamped to it is a tiny radio transmitter. Each bird a different frequency. Inside each radio is a humming crystal singing true to its assigned tone. Inside each bird a large pumping heart. A small piece of the dwindling wild. Maybe a gut carrying lead. A web connected of radio waves, air currents and time ticking. Without much doubt, humans have weighed heavy on the California Condor. When European descendents came in multitudes, the condor numbers dwindled to the point that all remaining birds were captured and bred in captivity to increase their numbers. Their existence is now entangled in that compassion. That this one soars above me suggests that our existence is entangled in its graces as well. The resources and time and devotion of the people in the breeding, release and tracking effort shows that the flight of this bird over this western plateau is vital in some way that we may be just beginning to learn. Perhaps the grief that Kirk feels over the loss of Condor 11 hints at it. Perhaps it is something that Kirk, climbing high remote peaks, straining at static and squinting into the far haze, has already learned.

The roads on the Kanab Plateau are marginal. On the map, they cross at angles acute and obtuse in another kind of web. To believe that each side track is documented would be folly. I feel my way past cow hollows and shallow drainages. The roads I pick degrade. Pinon and Juniper trees slap my mirrors flat, scrape like fingernails on my side panels. I distinguish the trees by their confetti. A clatter of berries on the roof means I brushed juniper, sharp needles on my arm means pinon. I fear to stop and see what damage is being wreaked on my camper sides. I plunge on. I have no idea exactly where I am, yet I know where I am and where I am going. I can see the far-off edge in glimpses. The dwarf forest spans about as if I am perpetually at its center. That is the perspective from within the machine. The scars on the machine more important than the scars on the trees from the rubbing.

Early in the summer, the scientists captured some of the condors in this area and treated them for lead poisoning. Lead shotgun pellets were ingested by some of the birds, perhaps by feeding on waterfowl shot but not recovered by hunters. I forget how many died before they took this drastic step. Maybe they found Condor 11. Perhaps they did not. I fear that it succumbed to the lead, its mind slowly fogging, its body weakening and finally starving. Maybe in a plane Kirk was able to track down the corporeal form of Condor 11. Maybe Condor 11 found a alcove high in the Redwall cliffs or Kaibab Formation and disappeared from science, from this world, from the frightfully scarce breed that skates along the edge of a great abyss.

My road becomes a track, then the track a trail. Other trucks have passed here, I can see their tireprints. Not many, though. Not enough to prune back the growth. The trees press from both sides, the old friends, pinon and juniper, frequently with each together, one on either side. The junipers seem to favor the left side of the track. I stop before a particularly narrow slot between two to contemplate passage. How far have I come? Will I come upon an easier track? Can I find an easier road back? What damage might I do?

I travel toward an edge. At the edge I will finally rest. I am like Condor 11. Lost, but travelling toward an edge. The world of life presses from either side, wearing at me. I was cradled by science and then turned loose in this wilderness to find my way. I know I travel the right road, can feel it deep in me, even without landmarks. But I fear for the darkness coming soon. And for the doubt of an easy road back.

I finally come to Kanab Point, frazzled and scarred. The end of the sky. The beginning of space. I have a canyon to soar, should I choose. Condor 11 has no choice. Her kind must soar above an edge like this. That is their track in this world. The one our science has forced on them, the one our science seeks to turn back. A handful of their kind hovers here. Not places like this. Here. This cliff. This canyon. Above this very terrace. My eyes water in the wind. I raise my arms unfeathered, but cannot feel this world lift me. Cannot feel the pride of driving a machine to this edge through the stiff resistance of things alive only to find that we have stripped a species to its bare bones and only then hope step back and look up again.