The cultural phenomenon of the house and of house improvement is a big deal these days.  We watch and weep over Extreme Makeover – Home Edition, mainly because how do we expect that man with no legs and no arms to build that dream house by himself, especially since his kids are all blind.  We watch TV shows about redecorating houses, flipping houses, surprising people by redesigning their houses while they’re out going into debt at the mall.  We are in love with houses.  And that’s why I love this humor piece from The New Yorker.  The narrator is a designer, a house flipper, and he and his partner have just bought Wyoming. 

Basically, we are looking at this purchase as a tear-down. There’s really not a lot here you’d want to keep, except one or two of the Wind River Mountains and some old nineteen-twenties Park Service structures in Yellowstone. Scott and I bought for the location – it’s convenient to anywhere, really, if you think about it – and for the simplicity of line. We wanted someplace rectangular, a much easier configuration from a design point of view, and we won’t have to fuss with panhandles and changeable riverine property lines where we’re going to get into disputes with the landowner next door. Spare us the headaches, please!

I spent a summer in a tent in Yellowstone and Jackson Hole, and I love it as much as any good American.  But I can appreciate the irony here.