Vineyards are popping up all over Malibu these days, from small plantings of just a few rows of vines to enormous enterprises that take up multiple acres. I know, I know, it's nothing compared to the sprawling spreads in Sonoma and Napa, but it's still a shock.

Here's a vineyard that's been taking shape over the last year, the mountaintop lopped off for this modestly-sized home, the surrounding landscape scraped clear of every growing thing to make way for grapes.

Whatever wildlife corridors were once here are gone for good. The bobcats and coyotes, roadrunners and quail, the mountain lions and mule deer, the hawks and owls and kestrels and kites, all the creatures whose home range this was have been forced to move on.

And we who drive over Kanan Road, much of it an uneasy mix of wildnerness and development, get to meditate on hubris and folly.