I was walking down by the creek the other day, looking for a place to sit and think about the price of eggs. I happened to glance over at a plot of land that, back in 2006, I remember being home to a very industrious family of ground squirrels and, perhaps, a singular, weather-beaten fence post. I bought my own home back in 2006 for what I consider a very normal amount of money—a price that felt like a fair trade for the structure and the dirt it sat upon.

Today, that same patch of land now features a four-story structure clad in what I believe is called “architectural corrugated metal.” It looks very clean, very sharp, and very much like a high-end toaster. I am told these are “urban luxury residences,” which is a fancy way of saying you can hear your neighbor sneezing through the wall, but you have a very nice view of the Bridgers while you do it.

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful for progress. It is wonderful that people want to live here. It is just that the math seems to have stopped behaving like numbers and started behaving like a fairy tale.

I spoke with my neighbor, Gary, who has been trying to help his son find a place to live. Gary is a contractor who has lived in the valley since before they put the stoplight at that one intersection where everyone gets confused. He told me that his son is looking for a “starter home,” which Gary described as “a structure with a roof, four walls, and plumbing that doesn’t scream at you.”

“Howard,” Gary told me while leaning against his truck, “I went to look at a listing the other day. It was a garden shed that had been converted into a ’tiny home studio’ with a sleeping loft. The realtor called it ‘a minimalist mountain sanctuary.’ It was listed for more than I paid for my first house, my first truck, and my college tuition combined.”

I told Gary that it sounded like a very cozy shed. He just looked at me and asked if I wanted to see a picture of the sink, which was apparently made from a carved river rock. It was a very nice rock.

The trouble with these new developments isn’t just the price; it’s the architecture of confusion. We have these massive, sleek condos sitting directly next to homes that were built in the 1940s. One house has a rusted tricycle in the yard and a dog that naps on the porch, and the house next door has a floor-to-ceiling glass wall where someone is sitting on a designer stool drinking green juice. They are only ten feet apart, but they might as well be in different centuries.

I’m sure the people in the glass house are very nice. I’m sure they moved here for the lifestyle, just like we all did. But when the price of a standard suburban residence starts requiring a small mountain of gold bullion to acquire, one has to wonder where the normal people are supposed to put their things.

I remember when “luxury” in Bozeman meant your cabin had a wood stove that actually worked and a driveway that didn’t turn into a river during the spring thaw. Now, “luxury” seems to mean a keypad lock and a dedicated space for your electric bicycle.

I suppose we are just becoming a more sophisticated city. My wife tells me that I need to stop measuring everything against the 2006 index. She says that 2006 is a long time ago and that the economy is a “dynamic, evolving entity.” I told her that if the economy is an entity, it is currently a very greedy one that has forgotten how much a gallon of milk costs.

There is a sort of beauty to it, I suppose. The way the new buildings catch the sunset makes the whole valley look like a computer-generated dream. If you stand in the right spot—usually right in the middle of a traffic jam on 19th Avenue—you can almost convince yourself that this is exactly what everyone intended when they arrived.

I will keep tending my garden. It is a simple garden, on a simple plot of land that I bought for a normal amount of money back in 2006. It doesn’t have a floor-to-ceiling glass wall, and my sink is made of stainless steel, not a river rock. But it is quiet, and the squirrels are still here, and that seems like enough for me.

Howard Benchpress owns a home he bought in 2006 for what he describes as ‘a normal amount of money.’ He brings this up frequently.