In the Sierra Nevada Mountains, there's a lodge I thought would be "rustic," but turned
out to have TVs, vending machines, Monopoly boards, all the fabrications of modernity.

As a tour bus drove away, with passengers peeking through windows, concrete steps
led down to paths winding between deciduous and evergreen trees, over bridges built
above domesticated streams, like an alchemist, whose prima materia is every wild acre
land, every drop of salty sea, sells prefabricated Philosopher's Stones.