Upstairs in the great attic of California crowded with antiques, prehistory edges toward oblivion, like the early entries of a blog, long buried under new stuff. Remember when rustic meant a real log cabin chopped down with your bare hands and packed upright with mud? These poor retirees with their surround sound, green lawns and hot tubs have to live all civilized-like, as if they haven't settled in the woods at all. There's little magic or adventure that isn't pre-designed playground: ski, ride, speed, bet, fore! with limited parking.

I know the silver barons sent armies to the basin to raid the stores a century and a half ago, and like a fleet of semi trucks the ancient felled trees skied down the mountains toward Nevada (much of the old forest rots in the crypts of long-abandoned silver mines underneath Virginia City). The same steep hillside now is furrowed with trails and concrete switchbacks. In addition the Carson Valley has transformed and continues to fill at a brisk pace; before the end of my lifetime it should look something like the San Fernando Valley, and as aging California emigrants slowly peter out, their grandchildren and the offspring of foreign casino workers will clutter those tracts with a hyper-urban post-history I can only imagine... and probably should not.