It was like tea bleeding in hot water. A blend of fragrances that rolled up hill in a slow, thermal simmering. The peppermint butter aroma of bitter rush blooms, silken spice of sage, and vanilla honey of mountain mahogany. The warm, dogfoot smell of campfire juniper, and purified starness of mocha brown basalt blotched with lichens colored of copper.
Each layer you can yet, calm it as the clouds. These aromas mix together the way the hint of wonderful food cooking makes its way through into every room of a house. This loft of high desert breaths weld around him and broke his gaze from the map he'd wandered and become lost, staring into. His mind was out of sea.
And now the metal core of the mountains touched him, reminding him that he was, at the moment, far from any ocean. The line of dust crossing the valley below him had entered a canyon fork that eventually saddled out and topped over the range, a mile or so east of him. To catch it in person and lay eyes on it, or just to cut whatever tracks it left in its wake, he decided to make a run for it.