I walked down Main Street last Tuesday, just to see what the morning light looked like hitting the old brick. It looked fine, mostly. But then I stopped into a bakery that used to be a place where you could get a slice of bread and a friendly nod. Now, the display case was filled with what I can only describe as skyscraper muffins.

These muffins were at least six inches tall. They stood like little tan towers of flour and sugar, each one topped with a crumble so dense it looked like it had been compressed by a hydraulic press. I asked the young man behind the counter—who was wearing a very clean apron and no hat—why the muffins were reaching for the ceiling. He told me it was “the signature silhouette.”

I didn’t know muffins needed a silhouette. I remember when a muffin was just a humble, slightly rounded thing that fit in your hand and didn’t require a structural assessment before you took a bite. When you have to eat a muffin with a steak knife, it stops being a morning treat and starts being an engineering project.

It’s not just the muffins, of course. It feels like everything in the valley is trying to be taller, sharper, and a little more expensive than it needs to be. We have condos going up on North 19th that look like they belong in a brochure for a space station, while the little cottage next door looks like it’s holding its breath, waiting to be turned into a parking lot for a yoga studio.

My neighbor, Dale, who has been fixing truck engines in his driveway since 1984, put it best the other day. He was looking at a new apartment complex with those floor-to-ceiling windows that let everyone see exactly how much Nordic furniture you own.

“Phyllis,” he said, wiping his hands on a rag, “if they keep building them this high, pretty soon the sun won’t hit the valley floor until noon. We’ll be living in a canyon of our own making.”

I don’t think he was talking about the muffins, but he might as well have been. We are all just trying to exist in the space we’ve always known, but the space keeps changing shape. It’s hard to recognize a place when the breakfast pastries start looking like the new condos.

I bought a coffee and sat on a bench, watching a group of people in very expensive hiking gear walk by without looking at the mountains. I didn’t eat the muffin. It seemed like it wanted to be admired more than it wanted to be eaten.

Phyllis Grainbelt has lived in the Gallatin Valley her entire life and remembers when the Co-op was just a co-op. She does not elaborate on what this means.