Sometime Let a Back Road Take You Home:

What the Journey to Mato Tipila Taught Me About Healing

Nine miles of Wyoming back road. A town of 300 souls. A sacred mountain whose very name means healing from within. And a journey that begins the moment you decide to slow down.

by Bunny Sings Wolf | IndigenousHealing.io

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Every August, thousands of riders come through Hulett, Wyoming.

And every once in a while, someone stops. Looks up at the tower nine miles down the road. And asks a question they have never quite been able to shake:

I live here. Nine miles from Mato Tipila. I am Bunny Sings Wolf, Indigenous Wisdom Keeper, Dream Song Carrier, and Ambassador for the Lakota Dakota Nakota Nation — a descendant of Lakota Chief John Grass (Mato Watapke). And I have been watching people come to this land my whole life, rushing toward the tower, rushing away from it, rarely stopping long enough to hear what it is actually saying.

What it is saying — what it has always been saying, to every person who pauses long enough to listen — is something your own body already knows. Something your nervous system has been trying to tell you for years, somewhere beneath the noise and speed of the life you are living.

Come home. Come back inside. The medicine you are looking for is not out there.

It is in here.

The back road is already taking you somewhere. Keep reading and see where it leads.

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Hulett, Wyoming. Population 300. Nine miles from Devils Tower on a two-lane road that winds through rolling ranch country, past ponderosa pines, past grasslands of the Black Hills its original people have always called the Heart of Everything There Is — the Heart of Mother Earth herself.

Most GPS systems route travelers straight to the tower from the interstate and straight back out. Hulett barely registers as a waypoint. It is, by every measure of modern life, a place people pass through rather than stop at.

But here is what those people miss:

They miss the quality of silence here. 

The way the sky opens differently. 

The way something in the air — and I say this not as poetry but as plain fact that visitors have been reporting for as long as anyone can remember

 — slows the nervous system down and quiets something deep inside the mind. 

It's a healing place.

They miss the understanding that this land has been hosting healing ceremonies for centuries. 

That the inipi — the sacred sweat lodge, the purification ceremony — has been held in the shelter of that tower since before the Lakota had words for the grief that modern people carry into it now.

And they miss Hulett itself. A town where neighbors still know each other by name. 

Where the last meal of the day is still called supper. 

Where the pace of life follows something older and wiser than a notification schedule.

I want to say something about the thousands of riders who come through here every August, because I think they understand something that quieter travelers sometimes miss.

Riders know that the road is not just transportation. 

It is transformation. 

It is life and death in motion. 

There is a reason people cross whole continents on a motorcycle when they could fly

 — because the flying takes you to a destination, but the riding takes you somewhere else entirely. 

Somewhere inside.

The vibration of the engine. 

The necessity of presence — because on a bike, you cannot afford not to be present. 

The way the landscape moves 

through you rather than past a window. 

The way a long day of riding empties out whatever was clogging your mind when you left.

That is not an accident. 

That is Nature's design.

And the land around Mato Tipila amplifies it. 

Riders who have been here before come back. 

Not just for the rally — for the road. 

For the tower. 

For something they cannot always name but recognize deep in their body, somewhere behind the sternum, 

somewhere in the quiet center of things.

What if the road brought you here for a reason that is bigger than the rally?

You may have heard it called Devils Tower. The name was a mistranslation — a U.S. Army colonel's interpreter in 1875 misread a Lakota phrase and the error stuck.

 Our name for this place is Mato Tipila — Bear's Lodge.

But the deeper teaching goes further than a name.

Bear medicine is one of the most ancient and widely recognized healing symbols across cultures on every continent. The bear hibernates — going deep within, into darkness, into stillness — and emerges renewed. In many Indigenous traditions, Bear is the keeper of the healing medicines, the guardian of the inner journey, the one who teaches the people to look inside themselves for what they need.

In our Lakota understanding, Mato Tipila is the Home of Bear Medicine. The home of healing from within. what our elders pointed toward as the seat of inner medicine and sight — what some scientists now call the pineal gland.

This is not a fairy tale. This is a map.

When the park service shares the tribal stories with visitors — the stories of children and bears, of humans reaching upward toward the stars, of great claws scoring the rock face — they often frame these as charming legends from different peoples who each had their own explanation for a remarkable geological formation. But these stories are not competing explanations. They are different windows into the same teaching:

And the Black Hills — what our people have called the Heart of Everything There Is, the Heart of Mother Earth — hold Mato Tipila at the center of that heart. The place where, if you are still enough, you can feel your own heartbeat synchronize with something much older and larger than yourself.

Our stories also speak of our origin in the Star Nation — and of returning there when this earthly walk is complete. The children who became stars in the story of Mato Tipila are not lost. They are home. That teaching, too, is medicine — for every person who has ever lost someone they love and wondered where they went.

The park service calls these fairy tales. The elders call them medicine. You will know which is true the moment you stand at the base of Mato Tipila and feel what your body already knows.

For the full teaching about Mato Tipila — the ceremonies, the sacred inipi place behind the tower, and what the gathering of 2028 is calling forward — continue reading the dedicated blog posts scheduled to follow this one, weekly, here.

The Back Road as Teacher

Here is what nine miles of Wyoming road between Hulett and Mato Tipila has taught me about healing — and what I carry into everything I do at IndigenousHealing.io.

Most of the healing offered in the modern world is interstate travel. 

Take this supplement. 

Follow this protocol. 

Fix this symptom.

 Arrive at wellness as a destination.

Nature's healing is a back road.

It does not take you straight to peace. It takes you through balance first — the honest reckoning with what is actually out of alignment in your life. 

Through harmony next — the slow, sometimes uncomfortable process of making peace with what is. Into abundance — the surprising discovery that once you stop fighting reality, there is more than enough of what you actually need. 

And finally into peace — not as a destination you reach once and keep, 

but as a place you return to, again and again, like a rider coming back to a road they love.

These are Nature's 4 Steps of Healing: 

Balance, Harmony, Abundance, Peace. 

Not a formula. A road. The back road. And like every good back road — the ride along the path IS the point.

Bear already knows this. Bear has been living it forever: go within, be still, let the deep interior do its work, emerge renewed. 

Every sweat lodge ceremony held at the base of Mato Tipila is a human being doing exactly what Bear taught us to do — entering the darkness, surrendering to the process, trusting what comes from the inside out.

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I made this video during my time as Director of the Hulett Chamber of Commerce — to show travelers what is waiting on the road less traveled through our corner of Wyoming. Watch it. And notice what the back road does to your breathing before you even arrive.

Every rider who has ever felt the shift that happens somewhere around mile three hundred — when the noise of the life they left stops competing with the sound of the wind — has already taken the first step without knowing it.

That shift is Balance. And it begins inside — in the body, in the nervous system, in the pineal stillness that the road and the land and the presence required by a bike at speed all conspire to open.

Here is how the road maps to the steps:

The moment you stop bracing against what is behind you and start receiving what is in front of you. The moment you admit that the speed you have been traveling is not sustainable — that something in your life is out of alignment. Mato Tipila, Home of Bear Medicine, has been holding space for this moment for centuries. You do not need a ceremony. You need only the willingness to be honest about where you actually are.

Step 2 — Harmony — Making Peace With the Road

You cannot force a back road to be an interstate. You cannot force the river to run uphill. Harmony is the step where we stop fighting the nature of things — including our own nature — and begin to work with what is actually true. Bear in the cave does not fight the winter. Bear surrenders to the darkness, trusts the inner warmth, and waits. The land around Mato Tipila teaches this without words.

Step 3 — Abundance — Discovering What Was Always There

Once you stop fighting reality, something unexpected happens: you notice abundance you were moving too fast to see. The hawks riding thermals above the tower. The color of the Black Hills grasslands in late July light. The way a stranger in a small Wyoming town hands you something real without being asked. Abundance is not the destination. It is what lines every road once your eyes — inner and outer — adjust.

Step 4 — Peace — The Bear Emerges

Peace is not the end of the road. It is what you carry in your body when you have walked the first three steps — and what you return to, again and again, like a rider coming back to a road they love. Like Bear returning to the hillside, renewed. It is not a feeling you get from outside. It is a medicine that rises from within. Mato Tipila — the Home of Bear Medicine — has been pointing to this all along.

If you came through Hulett this summer on your way to the rally — or on your way to the tower 

— or on your way to something you have not yet named

 I want you to know that the road brought you past something worth stopping for.

IndigenousHealing.io is a free global healing community where Indigenous wisdom meets the science of our times through Nature's 4 Steps of Healing. It is not a clinic. It is not a course. It is not a road. It is a path, a circle — open, free, and already walking.

If you want to go deeper — if Mato Tipila called something in you that you are not ready to leave on the shoulder  — come in. Bring what the ride stirred up. Bring what the tower opened up. The Bear medicine in you recognizes what it recognizes for good reason. The circle path can hold it.

And if you feel something even larger stirring 

— if you are the kind of person who would cross a continent for the right reason

 — there is a gathering being called for Summer Solstice, June 20, 2028. Up to 1,400 Life-honoring Resonance Walkers, circling Mato Tipila together. Live-streamed to the world. 

A prayer made of feet, hands held in an international human circle with resonance, with intention and the oldest medicine road any of us has ever walked.

One more thing — something our ancestors have been saying about Mato Tipila itself that changes everything about what that tower is. 

It is coming soon in its own post. Stay on the road.

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🌐  Join the Free Healing Circle

🏔️  Read: What IS Mato Tipila?

🌿  Read: The Sage That Comes From Trees

🤍  Support Circle the Walk of Peace Path 2028

📍  Find Hulett, Wyoming

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Mitakuye Oyasin — All My Relations 🌿

Bunny Sings Wolf 

Indigenous Wisdom Keeper · Dream Song Carrier  ·  Ambassador, Lakota Dakota Nakota Nation