Early one morning after a rainy night in March I hiked a mile or so across the desert to find fields of desert sunflower, primrose, and sand verbena. That’s snow-covered Toro Peak in the distance.

I returned to the car with my pants soaked from last night’s rain and my boots filled with sand from repeated plunges down a foot or so through the rain-softened sand into underground rodent burrows.

Most of the time if you stand in this spot you will see this view—>
(Thanks, Google Earth)

But not this year!–>