desert and sub-tropical regions

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Is it possible for a desert region to exist alongside a sub-tropical forest with only about a 1/4 of a mile between them?

Watching a movie where, one minute, they're in a woodland forest, they travel a bit and they're in a baron desert region. Wouldn't say so much heat as just dry rock formations and canyons. A very brief stay there and they're back in the woodland forest.

There are anomalies in places where there's a very small patch of desert in temperate to sub-tropical regions but to the scale of what I'm talking about, a whole baron and dry canyon...

The Sahara does have Oasis.

Both natural, and manmade, irragation can create a garden spot in the middle of a desert in which you can almost have one foot in each vegation zone.

So I would say it can happen. Camel caravans depend on it actually.

The opposite- a pocket of desert in a wet zone happens too. You can have a rain shadow caused by mountains blocking the prevailing winds and forcing rain to fall before it reaches the valley on the lee side. Thus making the valley a desert ( its common in the state of Washington). But you couldnt do that within one quarter of a mile. The mountains have to be thousands of feet high and miles broad for that to work.

So you can have oasis in the middle of a desert in that small a space. But you cant quite make a pocket of desert happen in a larger forest in that small a space.

Well, in the movie, there is a very tall cliff.

Also, they're very close to a large body of water. Possibly a large lake, sea or ocean.

Just curious because everything is green and lush except for that one little pocket as you put it where everything's dry and rocky.