The video sequence starts off with a kid splashing in a fancy pool--not a lake or cold stream. Then the camera cuts to a handsome dude in sherbet-colored pants swinging a big club on a rolling golf course. "Click," he hits a Tiger-length drive. Finally, there is a sweep of a spacious, suburban-styled living room followed by an outdoor, heart-tweaking portrayal of a family chasing a dog across a mowed meadow at sundown. As you would suspect, there are no serious mountains, forests, dusty trails, walls of granite, rushing streams, or snowflakes shown. And certainly no traffic.

The real estate ads remind me of the early days (1960s) of plastic, cruising sailboats. Those advertisers, too, knew what they were doing. They, like Houdini, were selling illusions. The ads for the cruising boats--remember Westsails, Morgans, Catalinas--only featured pictures of immaculate salons. Most often there was a lovely, varnished table with a big, potted plant sitting flat on it. Never on your life would you see a picture of the boat heeling, or of spray crashing over the bow, or of the crew, faces etched with tension, huddled in the cockpit in yellows, surrounded by an ocean of waves.

These days the upper-income masses are being sold a piece of the good life here at 6,000 feet. It's just that the definition of what constitutes "good" is being changed daily with the swing of hammers and the spin of the marketeers. The human roots of this region were rugged individualism, independence, and camaraderie (today called community), often in the face of adversity. And the roots produced crops of gold prospectors, silver miners, loggers, mountaineers, skiers, sailors, store owners, and, generally, people in tune with the big out-of-doors. Not so long ago it could truthfully be said: Only the hardy need apply to live here. Nowadays, the roots are pretty well dead. Some people lament the loss, but a critical mass of citizens doesn't exist to alter where we are headed, and the absence of self-government in this region makes it unlikely the heading will change.

With our history of outspoken, don't-mess-with-me souls, how did things get out of hand? In the '70s I wrote a little piece, published locally, entitled, "Seven Stages on the Path to Over-Development." Now seems like a good time to dust it off for a look at the road just traveled. The even stages are: Innocence, Creeping Commercialism, Boom-time, Call for Action, Planning Dance, See Ya in Court, and Too Late. See what you think. What stage are we in in the Truckee/North Shore/Incline triangle?

Stage 1. Innocence. We are all Adams & Eves in the Garden of Eden. The line of thinking: Nothing much can go wrong here in this beautiful place; everyone is a right thinker like me; local government is on guard; folks are reasonable; it won't happen here. Particularly in Western USA, we have long had a sort of blind faith that open spaces will somehow absorb the negatives of growth. The working assumption in Stage 1 is that our way of life will assimilate any intruders.

Stage 2. Creeping Commercialism. This stage is usually facilitated by officials elected on promises of more jobs and lower property taxes. The officials are happily assisted by public servants eager to build larger departments, and by big-parcel landowners alert to a chance to cash in on the times. The thinking in Stage 2 is simple: Growth (development, construction) is good; it creates employment and prosperity for all. Bigger is better. Why, just a few thousand square feet more of retail space here, a stoplight there, one little 'ol extended runway, another few golf courses, and a touch of public transportation and we will all have smooooth sailing.

The incantations go on in meeting after meeting as the landscape is consumed, prices escalate, and modest-income people start squirming as economic pressures on them mount. As part of the commercialism, established Ma & Pa real estate brokers link up with big-league franchises that have city-scale advertising budgets. The budgets are spent to stoke demand in far-off places for bits and pieces of this increasingly punctured paradise. For locals, flat-lander invasions that were once an annoyance a few weeks a year slowly become a full-time problem. Some people start wondering why SOE--someone else--doesn't do something. Meanwhile, creeping commercialism makes for good bar and cocktail party chatter.

Stage 3. Boom-time. Sometimes a single event suddenly puts a geographical jewel on the map. Then creeping commercialism accelerates to warp speed. Knowledgeable people I know say that the boom-time at North Lake Tahoe was triggered by the 1960 Winter Olympics held in nearby Palisades Tahoe. By the end of the 1960s, the Tahoe Basin was mapped with subdivisions for a build-out population of 600,000 people.

The folks in Jackson Hole WY saw land prices start skyward when several movie stars bought heavily into that scenery (1970s). In Santa Fe NM, where BMWs now outnumber pick-up trucks, an enterprising series of smaller, crowd-attracting, annual events (music, art shows) in the 1980s seem to have paved the road for major development. The San Juan Islands made it into the big time around 1990 courtesy of National Geographic, Sunset, SEA, and other magazines that "discovered" the islands hidden away in the Northwest.

During boom-time, by any measure, the overall composition of the way of life (air or water quality, traffic, crime rate, cost of living, noise level, parking, prices, pace, etc.) starts changing perceptively. Almost always, development outruns public services--roads, sewers, schools, police--and the taxpayers have to pick up the tab to fill the gap. More than one, once-smaller community in the USA is currently in a state of political siege over just who is to pay for all the "progress." (Studies in a dozen USA locations show that the cost of residential development always exceeds the tax revenue such new development generates.)

Stage 4. Call for (Government) Action. At some point in time the deterioration finally hits home with a critical mass of people in the community at large. Enough realtors, doctors, plumbers, artists, store owners, mothers and fathers, hermits, teachers, and retirees find they can't get around any more without a hassle, or that the constant airplane noise is producing headaches, or that it is less and less fun to go into town. Then the backlash starts. Someone who remembers the good old days rallies the troops with a town hall meeting or two. A few newcomers or young activists show up at meetings of public officials and ask questions that go unanswered. Local weeklies (now owned by distant corporations) carry heavy words of distress on their editorial and letters-to-the-editor pages. Slowly an attempt to halt the rush to urbanization is mounted, but by now there is great momentum to grow, no matter the consequences.

The record of the past twenty-five years indicates that only a few communities across the country have been successful in regaining control from the bigger-is-better interests and mentality. The common denominator in the successful communities seems to be that the people who live there--young, old, full-, part-, and life-timers--all get involved in a substantive way in protecting their collective way of life. Otherwise, the better organized, commercial-interests' groups prevail with the governing bodies and paid staffs, and the development spiral continues.

Stage 5. Planning Dance. This very popular event is usually held with live music (public hearings) and the earnest participants seek common ground via compromises. Planning, seriously undertaken, flushes commercial interests out into the open where they can be seen, at least. Hired soloists (consultants, architects, attorneys) usually, but not always, dominate the microphones. The presiding, elected officials typically, but, again, not always, lay back and look for the lowest-stress way to get through and end the debate, so they can head home.

Leadership is frequently in short supply when it comes to touchy matters such as land use and density. Besides, a way of life is a subjective thing; it's hard to define and defend. Water availability and sewer capacity are sometimes short-term stoppers to development here in Stage 5. But the stoppers don't hold. Money is always found for more pipes.

Sometimes the dance brings the community together; other times it splinters it irrevocably. During the dance there are enough numbers and projections thrown around to prove anything. Way of life usually doesn't even get much of a hearing. It's a fuzzy notion. In the end, the whole planning dance is normally done in waltz-time, and those with the most stamina prevail.

At Lake Tahoe, for example, where the dance has turned into a thirty-year marathon, it is interesting to note that even today after years of boom-time, the local communities are still in budget holes and the public school enrollment is declining as young families move away--priced out of the way of life. The promised, economic benefits of growth have simply not materialized. In their place we have frequent congestion, lawsuits, lower water quality, anemic tourism, high-cost social services, and a narrowing population mix. Locals have become an endangered species.

As the Stage 5 dance continues, the finite supply of land, riverfront, parking space, and community spirit shrinks.

Stage 6. See Ya in Court. As the intangibles of a way of life bang up against the tangibles of big dollars, fictional property rights, and development agendas, the scene shifts to the courts. This shift sometimes leads to injunctions, moratoriums, and other third-party restrictions. Whatever control locals had--and it has never been much here at 6,000'--passes out of their hands and over to judges. Once in a while a white knight (individual or organization) appears on horseback with saddlebags full of money to save one chunk--e.g., Meeks Bay and Coldstream Canyon. But the knights are a disappearing breed.

Stage 7. Too Late. If the desired way of life has not prevailed by this stage, it won't, ever. In the unique communities of the land where a "deliberate" (H.D. Thoreau) lifestyle once dominated, much will have been replaced with standard, suburban substitutes, with synthetic stimulation. Slowly, in place of a viable community made up of people who love and respect the total place, we all end up with something far less, by any thoughtful measure.

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You, as well as I, can name many communities across the land where locals have already waited too long. The citizens neglected to get involved, to fix things before they broke, and after they broke it was too late. Like an anchor lost overboard in deep water, a way of life is difficult to retrieve.

It is easy to shrug one's shoulders, of course, and say that the demise of special places on our planet Earth is inevitable. It can be blamed on the population expansion, developers, sunspots, greed, the officials we elect, or.... But, looking back, as a veteran of a couple of such places, I think I have to agree with Pogo who said, "I have met the enemy and he is us."