By midwinter, Los Angeles is defined less by cold than by light. Cool, clear mornings give way to afternoons shaped by the low winter arc of the sun, painting the mountains in long shadows and the sky in improbable color. And as that low light settles in, my whole body shifts in spirit. Somewhere deep in the limbic system, a synapse fires like a flare, tracing the old circuitry of migration and memory — that annual pull toward the wide-open deserts of the American Southwest. I dream of lizards, dark skies, sand dunes and sunsets streaked in rose-mauve and smoky violet, the air heavy with the scent of wet creosote and campfire smoke. A sunrise in the desert. (Josh Jackson) But mostly I long for the open road, those forgotten highways where pavement runs through the quaint towns, weathered landmarks and the millions of acres of public land in the desert. It is a nostalgia shared by the chroniclers of the past. In 1971, Lane Magazine published “The Backroads of California,” a large-format book that …