"Joseph squinted through dust across a field of dust into the halo of the sun. It peeked over a hill, orangey-red as the day ended, but the circles around it were golden and shimmering. The air gave it that effect, hot as it was from being baked all day, moving as it was with the wind. That wind didn’t make it any better; the breeze was as warm as breath and it brought no respite. It brought sand and tumbleweeds and, every once in a long while, rain.

As the sun finally sank, the sky began to fade, the air and the heat and the wind calmed and faded but still Joseph stood, leaning against a fencepost. He still had a lot to get out of his brain, and here was the perfect place to do it. Here there was no sight, sound or smell of man and he could be lonely. He had parked his truck and hiked the rest of the way so that he didn’t have to be reminded of the rest of the world."

Joseph is me, more or less, in that his grandfather is my grandfather. He appears a little later on in the story.

I believe that would be very confusing to the reader. It would involve a point-of-view shift from first-person to third-person for the character of Joseph. And even if you put the essay in quotes and tag it as something Joseph is saying, who is he talking to?

I bet you could describe many smells that you remember from that place, try working them in. There were bound to be sounds, snakes maybe, birds, or other animals. Giving it some sound and smell would bring it to life in the mind of the reader.