Golden Eagle Lodge (TEE PEE at Miguels House!)

It's been many years since I've desired to have a Tipi set up on my property; ever since the beginning of my flute making journey, when I spent a month in a Tipi on John Eagle Hearts Land, Learning to make flutes, and beginning to connect with the "Red Road" (Native American Spirituality). Since my family and I moved to Colorado, owning a small piece of land in a remote town in the Rockies near the headwaters of the Colorado river. We've been able to offer our humble abode as a place for people to come and pray, heal and celebrate life, where we facilitate various ceremonies and fun events for people to share and enjoy. When I first bought the TiPi, I originally pictured it to be used as a changing room for the Women to use at our Sweat Lodge Ceremonies, but after it was set up, it turned into a wonderful sacred space for our family and friends!

The harvesting of the poles and carving of them was the first step in the process of constructing our new lodge.

Where we live, as you can see in the background of some of these photos, we're dealing with a pine beetle epidemic, that will potentially destroy 90% of our lodge pole pine forests. Most of us see that as natures way of re-balancing our ecosystem as these trees are only meant to be half the size that they are(trying to keep it positive). So the benefits are many blue stain pine flutes, ans standing dead tipi poles! Behind my house is cotton wood pass, where we can find oodles of standing dead, tall and thin lodge poles. We harvested enough poles to have 17 finished poles. Then we have to strip the bark and cut them to around 24 feet. Then just a quick sand to smooth them up, and they're ready to go. This process is a great process, witch little did I know is a very rewarding part of the TIPI building process, helping us to begin to connect with the scared space that we were about to Erect!

So the night before a ceremony we had on the land, we set the lodge up for the first time. I've helped erect many tipi's at Sundances and other events, but it still ended up being a chore, in the small leveled space we had for it. Very few flat spots in the rockies! It was a lot of fun though, just in time before the thunderstorm./EM>

The next morning we put on the canvass, and had it up for our first ceremony. That evening we had our first fire in the tipi, and had our "Awakening" of the lodge with some good drumming with friends and family

The Tipi inherited the name Golden Eagle Lodge, as in the first few weeks it was Erected, we had two Golden Eagle ceremonies, where a group of us had the honor to help prepare the eagles to be used in ceremony, making fans and eagle bone whistles, using everything. ( Don't worry, papered Indians involved, no poaching!) That was a very powerful Christening to this now sacred place. The Golden Eagle Lodge has since been used for some wonderful events, like flute playing, story telling with Vince Chafin( well known flute performer), Amaurante Montez, and myself, a story telling for the cub scouts, many drum/music circles, camp outs for friends and our children, and just a quiet sacred space to regenerate!