Buildings such as these once housed people who lived hard, and died even harder. Badmen, bad whiskey and bad climate were all part of Bodie life. Its streets are now silent, but its bad climate still erodes these battered facades, and Bodie’s badmen have all gone to their graves. The town has died with them. This image, through the interplay of light, shadow, texture, and color, expresses both sadness and desolation, but yet I feel that there is a sense of haunting beauty in this scene as well. It is this tension between such decay and beauty that made Bodie so fascinating to me.