When I Need to Slow my Mind and Body Down

I think about the SoCal desert in winter. After it has just rained, how it smells. How the mountains are misty blue. The smoke trees are soft pink and the palo verdes are brilliant lime green. The ocatillo are bursting with red tips and the air is the same temperature as my skin. A coyote runs across the path, fur almost translucent in the early sunlight.
When my grandfather was still alive, he used to come down to the Chocolate Mountains and I’d drive out and stay with him. Those desolate highways. Those lonely, lonely people.