Back in the 1980s, I moved to California from Colorado. Soon I found work I loved and ended up staying for more than thirty years. I always missed the Rocky Mountains. Many of these stories are set in Mission Trails Regional Park, several thousand acres of coastal sage and chaparral. The landscape was one of the few remaining pieces of untouched chaparral so close to San Diego. Because most native plants go dormant in summer, turning black and sere, to many people it looked like "nothing." To anyone who gets to know it, the chaparral is fascinating, complex, and very alive. It taught me so much; most of all, it taught me to see. I grew to love it. About thirty miles east of the city are "real" mountains where snow falls a few times every winter. I trekked those trails as often as I could. My companions were usually one or more of my dogs, but sometimes there were human friends who went along with me. Now I am back in Colorado. Every day I have the chance to get out somewhere, I see and feel again how much I learned on the dusty trails of Southern California's chaparral hills and the higher mountains beyond.