ANOTHER ROADSIDE ATTRACTION

During the last two weeks, I’ve spent many hours on the back roads of western Montana, watching the drama of the natural scenery change. On Tuesday’s drive from Whitefish to Missoula alone there were mountains, hills, lakes and disappearing streams (now they’re here, but they won’t be in a month or so once the run-off stops), sunshine, rain, and sideways snow that decorated the evergreens along Rt. 83.

In addition to the natural wonders of Montana, the roads are flanked by curiosities — garnet mining ghost towns, taxidermy academies (and “alive again” museums), a million “trading posts” and all manner of giant, carved bears — standing, sitting, climbing, and in repose.

The most charming bits, however, were the over-sized livestock, preferably fashioned out of painted fiberglass.

Here are a few of my favorite roadside attractions:

In the garden known as Eden, our mythological sweethearts went too far. Tempted into unnatural positions by the Trickster, they aroused the censors who promptly shut them down. Management threw in a curse to boot, and that primal curse declared that the earth, because of man’s funky nature, would thereafter bring forth thorns and thistles.
— Tom Robbins (in Another Roadside Attraction)