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Posted on 12/26/2001 4:26:47 AM PST by RaceBannon

You could call them Wild West moments ...

My husband had one recently while heading south on Highway 13 in Colorado. A herd of elk ambushed him and his Ford Ranger in the black of the night. Since his truck was nearly totaled in the attack, he has a new motto: Save a pickup, eat an elk.

I had my own moment in Belgrade, Mont.

Let me note, first, that there's much in Big Sky country that I find exotic - the gray wolves that roam on media mogul Ted Turner's nearby ranch, 75-mph speed limits, old gold mines, and raucous debates about ... logs.

Conversely, what I consider hum-drum is downright outrageous to the locals. Here's what happened.

One afternoon, while I was hanging around my hotel's lobby, Dave, the maintenance supervisor, started telling Cheri, the front desk clerk, about a know-it-all in a place about which I know all.

"They had this kid on Fox News from a liberal college in Massachusetts," began Dave.

I immediately thought: Well, which one of a hundred colleges could he mean?

"He was complaining about the war in Afghanistan. This kid blamed the war on American racism," he editorialized to an attentive Cheri. "Their ideas for stopping terrorists didn't make any sense."

Dave, they major in not making sense there.

"I nearly gagged," Dave concluded.

Why wasn't a gag placed over the mouth of this kid?

"You're talking about Hampshire College in Amherst, right?" I guessed.

"Yeah, that was the name of the school," he said.

"I live there," said I.

Admitting this to Dave, who's retired military, is only a little better than saying, "I live in a cave in Tora Bora." What would he think if he knew that, in addition to broadcasting the results of their "all-community" vote about an "unjust war" to the world, Hampshire offers a class in Erotic Device Design?

Dave, however, explained why this story is intriguing to a patriotic Montanan. "A peace movement out here would be a shock. We're more the militia type."

Certainly, there's no indication that hard-working Westerners would dash to appear on a national television show to throw an ideological tantrum against the entire Department of Defense. Yet, it is to their great credit - considering how far removed they are from Ground Zero - that they view 9-11 as an attack upon "our" citizens, requiring decisive action. No fanfare. No press releases. Just steadfast, quiet support.

Cheri, for instance, has been gently trying to persuade Belgrade's budding peacenik - her teen-age daughter, Savannah - to reconsider her anti-war views. She made Savannah watch portions of the Osama bin Laden video and accompanied it with a short speech. "The man is guilty. He's got to pay for what he's done. America is doing everything they can to avoid bombing civilians."

According to Savannah: "I don't think we should bomb innocent people because they attacked us. But my mom says we should fight back with all we have." Atta girl, Cheri. Thanks to your persistence, your daughter won't be applying for admission to Hampshire College anytime soon.

Like Dave and Cheri, Clint Cain, spokesman for the Bozeman group affiliated with the Militia of Montana, is also giving war a chance. "Whatever George W. Bush has done is fine. I do agree with the bombing. I do agree with getting all al-Qaida," says ol' Clint. "The most dangerous time in the United States is right now."

But he adds a caveat that makes him sound statesmanlike and restrained: "Before going in after any more terrorists in any other country, President Bush should craft a foreign policy with Congress."

In light of the level-headedness of the folks I've met here in the land where the buffalo roam, I am beginning to question just how wild the West really is. It seems to me that it's the East Coast's ivory tower leftists who should be dubbed "wild."

From the Continental Divide, Feliz Navidad.

Isabel Lyman lives in Pelham and writes a monthly column. She has been vacationing in the West.

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