Distinctly Montana Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.distinctlymontana.com/i/1501082
35 w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m him what he thought. Charlie told him he couldn't say, because he didn't know what it was. The man told him it was called "The Inner Man." Charlie told him the inner man needed a doctor "durn quick." Improbably, they ended up going to lunch. As related by Mitchell, Charlie said that "he was a hell of a good sport... I took it he wasn't too much put out the way I felt about his Inner Man. Later I found out all his mind wasn't so mixed up, for we got to be good friends, and the following sum- mer he and his wife visited us at our summer cabin on Lake Mc- Donald. We hit the trail together often, and I sorter feel he's not so mixed up now..." In 1923, Charlie tripped on the slope outside of the cabin, sus- taining an injury that would haunt him for the remaining three years of his life. In 1925, Charlie and Nancy cut their summer at Bull Head Lodge short to avoid a raging wildfire that nearly claimed the lodge. Charlie would die the next year before getting another chance to visit his favorite place. Nancy, less enamored of the rustic set- ting in the absence of her husband, moved to southern Califor- nia with Jack, never to return. Today, like Russell himself, Bull Head Lodge belongs to us all. Located off the Going-to-the-Sun Road, it is on the National Register of Historic Places. But it is also part legend: the legend of Charlie Russell, and the legend of the West, with which he has become synonymous. The yearning for that vanished West so clearly communicated in his paintings is still with us, as ardently embedded as ever in the American story. Would Charlie, a deeply nostalgic man himself, smile to think how he has himself become an object of intense nostalgia? After all, what would you give to have stayed at Bull Head Lodge as the guest of the real Charlie Russell, and hear him tell stories in his inimitable voice? Higher living, grounded in Montana soil, since 2009. SCAN QR CODE TO VOTE NOW VOTED BEST MARIJUANA DISPENSARY IN WHITEFISH & THE FLATHEAD VALLEY BEST OF MONTANA