Page 21 - Flathead Beacon // 6.25.14

FLATHEADBEACON.COM JUNE 25, 2014 | 21
Mountain Man Reggie. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
TL he Canyon’s Mountain Man
ocal legend Reggie Dunkin popular with tourists in the sum- has a lot of stories about his mer, but “it’s not a business, more of life and he’ll share a few of a hobby.”
them with you on a barstool at the Packers Roost or in his front lawn throwing tomahawks into a bat- tered wooden target. He’s got tales of living in New York, California and Indiana, “the crossroads of America.” He’s got stories about go- ing to the same school as David Let- terman and of playing the banjo in a city park with John Cougar Mellen- camp, back when he was just “John from Seymour.”
He’s also got a story about how he fell in love when he first arrived in Northwest Montana 16 years ago.
“I’ve been in every state in the union and I saved the best for last,” he said. “I fell in love with this place.”
For Dunkin, nicknamed Moun- tain Man Reggie by friends and lo- cals, this place is a little plot of land he’s carved out for himself at the confluence of the North and Middle forks of the Flathead River. Dunkin first arrived in Northwest Montana in the late 1990s when he began
Mountain Man Reggie holds one of his homemade koozies. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
Another of Dunkin’s hobbies is tomahawk throwing, a skill he learned decades ago in Vietnam. Dunkin said the secret behind throwing the ax into the wooden target is keeping your arm stiff and letting the rotation of your body do the work. On a recent spring morning, while sipping a Keystone Light in one of his “patent pending” wooden koozies, Dunkin was dem- onstrating decades of practice with the tomahawk and nailing the tar- get every time.
Dunkin said the people who poke fun at The Canyon, calling its inhabitants “critters,” are bul- lies who don’t understand the way things should be.
“People in The Canyon, like any small town, take care of each other,” he said. “People are kind here.”
He also said the people who call The Canyon home are unique, much like he is – someone who “strives to be unique, because unique is cool.”
working on the Belton Chalet res- toration. One of the highlights for Dunkin, a history buff who said he was born 150 years too late, was the chance to stay in the same building as President Teddy Roosevelt when the Rough Rider president first vis- ited Glacier National Park. Dunkin said he has slept in every room at
the Chalet, just to make sure he had stayed in the same room Roosevelt bunked in.
Since the early 2000s Dunkin has held various jobs in the area, although his favorite is making his “hillbilly huggies,” wooden beer koozies fashioned out of tree trunks. Dunkin said the koozies are
THE CANYON