In the serenity of the Sonoran Desert, of purple mountains and empty dunes, Kate finds the motivation in herself to quit her graduate program and move on with her life.

In fragments, Kate speaks about past loves that still cling onto her, her conversations with her sixty-year-old gay PhD advisor about quitting. While experiencing this mid-life crisis, Kate describes sitting languidly with a friend she had just met in the desert and talk about love. Momentous and serene at the same time, this pause in her life, this "shoulder season", gives her the resolve to move forward and become someone new.