A little confession: In my other, nonblogging life, I work at a magazine. Like, the kind that comes on paper and has glossy advertisements for gleaming Hummers. I’m a writer there, but I’m also the copy editor—the guy that reads all the pages after everybody else on staff does and makes sure all the i's are crotted and all the t’s are dossed. Yes, friends: I am the magazine’s grammar nanny. Which means I read every last word that goes into the mag, no matter how poorly written. And right now we’re putting together the magazine’s real estate supplement—a separate glossy magazine all its own, full of glossy pictures of people’s homes for other people to gawk at. And since the magazine is normally about skiing (is there any pursuit more green than chopping down trees to make magazines about hillsides where people have chopped down trees to ski down them?) the homes featured in this little side magazine are all in ski country. Also known as former wilderness, where bears and moose and elk might have played, or maybe some mighty eagles have soared, but all the eagles and elk and moose and bears have high-tailed it elsewhere because now there are a bunch of log cabins and hot tubs and screaming kids on skis overrunning their turf. You can see I consider this very satisfying work. (Note to self: Do not show this post to magazine boss.)

One of the stories I picked through today was about an 8,500-square-foot house in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. It sheltered not an extended family of 11 (plus Grandpa Joe and the rest) but the usual nuclear group: a couple or three kids, Mom and Dad. “Steps from the slopes” was the cliché used to describe its location. The owners were extremely pleased with themselves for covering the interior in reclaimed wood: some old barn trucked down thousands of miles from Oregon and transformed into flooring, that sort of thing. Somehow they seemed to view this as a “greener” option than, say, building a home half that size and decorating it with something local. Colorado does have its fair share of decommissioned barns, I would imagine; Steamboat is ranching country after all.

To me, these sorts are sustainability’s greater enemy, covering their architectural evils with the patina of responsibility. A month back we ran a story about a 10,000- or 12,000-square-foot house in Aspen whose owner went on and on about how “environmentally sensitive” the place was because they had sited it for good southern exposure—you could see the slopes right from the bedroom window. For reals.

And here’s the ugliest revelation: I’m part of the problem. A few years back, before I got hip to this whole green thing, I profiled a house that sat at 10,000 feet, “the highest residence in New Mexico” is what I think the owners told me. (Pardon me if I don’t have the stomach to go and verify that quote.) There are mitigating factors—the lot had already been cleared when these folks bought it, and it’s true that what they did build was certainly more mindful of their surroundings than the average mountain mansion—but in writing the piece I feel like I was promoting the Idolization of the Overstuffed Home, a key tenet of the Great Church of Real Estate Worship, in whose thrall America now finds itself. So today I saw this blog—and my measly 350-square-foot green studio project—as penance for my dark past of House Worship. Beating my breast and wearing my dust mask, I shall atone!