I just spent a rainy weekend in 29 Palms, a tiny desert town tucked alongside the Joshua Tree National Forest. The landscape is flat as a billiard table, but trees poke up to make a skyline — gnarled pines and palms with neckbeards of dead fronds. Spending time in the desert floods all my senses with nature’s creations. The clear, cool light just after dawn. The sweet fresh perfume of wet creosote after the rain. Crows cawing. Wind strumming the grasses. Once the storm passed, curtains of...