Berry Simpson stands at the summit of the Guadalupe Mountains and gazes out across the vast panorama of the Sonoran Desert. "It's breathtaking in its raw unconcern for the hiker," he writes. "Oddly enough, that indifference speaks to my heart."It's one of many perspectives that have, over the decades, shaped the author's life. Eloquently, with a penetrating but gentle eye and many a smile-because, as he learned from his dad, "there's always a joke"-Berry examines the things that ma...