YUCCA VALLEY, Calif. — Tyler Gaul strode across the sprawling backyard of his Yucca Valley home and surveyed the rocky hillside a few steps away from the pool and basketball court that sit atop his 2-acre property. When he first moved to the desert from Los Angeles last fall, this jagged landscape granted him a sense of serenity as the crowded city he left behind grappled with a pandemic. Gaul, who runs his own skin care company, knew it was time to move when he could no longer exercise outside his Echo Park apartment — his respite from stay-at-home orders — because of wildfire smoke polluting the air. Constant and worsening wildfires, paired with a public health crisis, proved to be too much. Classic stories from the Los Angeles Times’ 143-year archive “I have a lung condition, and I was like, ‘No, I can’t do this anymore,’” he recalled. So he set out for the desert. Like many other city dwellers who have fled urban sprawl over the last year and a half, Gaul sought shelter in …