Why California Will Never Be Like Tuscany

There must have been huge oaks and pines, cedars,                          maybe madrone,in Tuscany and Umbria long ago.A few centuries after wood was gone, they began to build with brick      and stone.Brick and stone farmhouses, solid, fireproof,steel shutters and doors.

But farming changed.60,000 vacant solid fireproof Italian farm housesOn the market in 1970,scattered across the land.Sixty thousand affluent foreigners,to fix them, learn to cook, and write a book.

But in California, houses all are wood—roads pushed through, sewers dug, lines laid underground—hundreds of thousands, made of strandboard, sheetrock, plaster—

They won't be here 200 years from now—they'll burn or rot.

No handsome solid second homes forThousand-year later wealthyMelanesian or Eskimo artists and writers here,

—oak and pine will soon return.