WILD HORSE PLAINS MONTANA

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"It's soothing," Doreen agreed. "All this wide-open space is restful.

" That's an understatement. Yet, what I'm going to tell you next may seem strange, but I'm sure the folks in this region will understand it perfectly. It happened twice. The first time, I'd been in the area for only three days and was driving through the Camas Prairie. The next day, it occurred again on the road just east of Quinn Springs. Each time, a feeling of great peace and relaxation suddenly flowed throughout my body.

At first, I just accepted it, then I realized its source. It was coming to me from the land itself. It was speaking—no, singing—to me . It gave a whole new meaning to the song, "The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Music." That might sound corny, but the feeling definitely wasn't. It was wonderful.

PARADISE

PHILOSOPHY

By Rube Wrightsman

LIKE DARK BEER AND SQUARE dancing, Paradise, Montana, isn't for everyone. At one time, I worried that the eastern hordes would someday discover this place and turn it into a slice of Manhattan, but that possibility doesn't bother me anymore. Every year, about a dozen people move in and about a dozen move out, often the same ones. The reason for leaving is always the same: no jobs. It's possible to make a living around Paradise, but not a good one. Most jobs are seasonal, low paying, physically wretched and still hard to find. In Paradise, people live on their wits and their valor instead of working for "The Man.

" Being eternally semi employed creates occasional anxieties, but it also brings an elegant sense of freedom. Every day offers the chance of adventure, and those who stay aren't so much the ones who can accept uncertainty as the ones who thrive on it. Accordingly, the folks around Paradise tend to be a tad different from mainstream Americans. Nestled among these craggy draws and gulches lives a motlev collection of the most independent-minded bunch of merry misfits you're likely to find anywhere in the Galaxy.

To say that no two of them are alike is to commit a felonious understatement. It's as if Beethoven, the Sex Pistols, and Homer and Jethro were on the same record album. In spite of this melange, or perhaps because of it, Paradise lacks the rowdiness and cosmic energy that characterize other parts of the West. No particular bizarreness prevails, because each person has his or her own, and the resulting balance creates a genial amicability. Trolls live in Wyoming, Oregon has elves, and California is overrun with wizards.

Paradise is populated by hobbits: sturdy, unassuming folks with furry toes, who cheerily go about their daily business with a modicum of indifference toward the rest of the world, but who can always be counted on in a pinch. Paradise's resemblance to Hobbiton is its greatest attribute. People still care about each other here, and everyone has a niche in the community, whether thev want it or not. In a place this small, everyone knows who and what everyone else is, and "nobody gets away with nothin'." In many ways, we're a boondock anachronism. So many people live up in the woods without electricity or plumbing that no one considers it an "alternative lifestyle." In fact, after a while, one gets to believing that Paradise really isn't any different from the rest of the United States. A trip to the city, even a little nerdy one like Missoula, quickly dispels this myth. Moseying around the shopping mall, despite being all duded up for town, the average Paradisian still looks like Jed Clampett.

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