I live in a town that lies in the middle of the eastern-Montana badlands. This is not the Montana you may have heard about in the media, which is full of towering Mountains and movie stars seeking ranches bigger than most counties. No movie stars come to where I live, unless it is to speed past on I-94.

Few people other than those who live here come to my home town. There is nothing to draw them here. Not Mountains, but low scrub hills fill our horizons. Unlike our cousins in the western part of the state, our views are not so spectacular as to cause people in Los Angeles or San Francisco to sell out and move here.

Most of the locals think that is just fine. We don't want Kevin Costner moving next door, driving the price of land so high we can’t afford to live here. And we know something that those who whip by on the interstate might find out if they slowed down -- those scrub Montana badlands are really beautiful. Most of us think they are as beautiful as anything our cousins in western Montana can see from their front yards. A person just has to look at our hills a little longer to appreciate them.

We even try to get a few to stop and take a second look. If they stop, they buy a tank of gas, a meal. It’s good for our meager economy.

This brings me to my dilemma and to my very personal motive for building this Web site. My dilemma is that I can't stand to live away from eastern Montana, but I can't stand to live here either. When I am away, I miss the badlands that I love and I miss people I have known my whole life. I am also, however, someone who not only loves, but needs to write. If I am not writing I become a morose, depressing and very dull guy. Unfortunately, along with the refreshing emptiness of eastern Montana comes isolation. I have lived in other places where there are a lot of writers, and I know that writers do not have to be lonely. But out here, there are few writers. And those who are here live far apart and rarely get together. I miss talking with others who love to write.

I had a poet friend who said, “It is important that your words end up in someone else's hands, even if you do it by hanging them on trees.” There are very few trees in eastern Montana. Since there are few trees and few writers, these words have been placed here in the hopes that someone sees them.