The story
Watch the plants change as you lose altitude. The brushy mountain cover gives way, and out across these lower slopes a new resident takes over, low and gray-green and evenly spaced, almost planted-looking. That's creosote bush, the signature shrub of the warm desert below, and seeing it means you've crossed over. If your window's cracked you might already catch its smell on the warm air, that sharp resinous tang people call the smell of desert rain. The high country is behind you now. You're entering the creosote's kingdom.
