With Eagles Wings

Today we entered into our second parade of the season, opening for the Lamont County Fair! Stan's boys and myself partook of the festivities through the non-profit group With Eagles Wings from Arapahoe, Wyoming. This group offers assistance to young men, women, and adolescents who struggle with chemical dependency and other issues, and the teens of this group have started some group therapy work with us once or twice a week at Stan's house. I hope you have the chance to check out my snapfish site so you can see all the pictures!

The night before the parade was as insane as I hope it gets around here. First off, no one around here likes to get up before 11am besides me, and even I fall short a few mornings a week after late night sweat lodge ceremonies! As we are winding down, trying to get into bed early by 10pm, Stan informs me that his two young nephews who normally help him out during the night and leaving with their uncle at midnight to go pick up some supplies for the parade. Which means I have to sleep in the house in case Stan needs anything during the night. As I am about to drift off, the young mother of Stan's grandson drops off her 1 year-old after her aunt threatened to hide him and take him away! So she brings this little baby, who had just been sleeping, into our house at the same time Stan's nephews start fighting over who got to sleep on the floor beside my couch when they got back from getting supplies. Suddenly I have a screaming, overtired, cranky baby in my arms as I am supposed to be getting some sleep. The boys are fighting, baby screaming, Stan yelling, and of course, the reason we have the baby is because its mom wanted to go out and party instead of caring for her kid. Arrrrg... Resentment, resentment... The boys finally take off, and teenage Sequoia comes in and takes the baby. Throughout the night the baby has nightmares and screams so loudly, that even with earplugs, my skin crawls. Everything is quiet, the boys come back complete with a full-on couch they decide to move into the living room at 3 o'clock in the morning. I get so fed up with the noise I finally grab my pillow and go back out to my peaceful tipi and catch some z's. At 4:30am another young mother comes into my tipi, crying that she needs a ride home and needs my phone. I let her borrow it only to have Daniel come back into the tipi, screaming at me to not lend my phone out to someone who is drunk and needs to stay put. Ack. I finally just get up since we need to get up anyway to get ready for the parade.

Once everyone got up, parade preparations went smoothly and everyone had a great time! The boys looked awesome in their warpaint, and they are hoping to win First Place for Mounted participants in this parade as they did in the Lander parade. After the parade we all jumped into Stan's pickup truck and headed down to the swimmin' hole to cool down in the 90F heat! Later, back at Stan's, the 3-week old foal I have been trying gently tame to my presence was lying down taking a nap, and it finally let me come right up to it and rub it all over - it never even got up! It just enjoyed its little massage. Afterwards I cooked dinner for about 20 people and we had a small, super hot sweat lodge ceremony. I ate and promptly fell asleep, the moon and stars lighting up my tipi, happy that the night before was not an omen for the day ahead.