Ranch Virtual Walking Tour: Come Home To The Feathered Pipe

Ranch Grounds

Ranch guests can wander alone exploring ambling brooks fed by mountain springs and savor open vistas to experience the healing power of Big Sky Country.

Ranch visitors can also find community with others, sitting on the open lawn in the shade of cottonwood trees, shimmering aspens, and fragrant pine with an exquisite view with Lake Tipi and mountain woodlands reflected in the lake.

Encircled by the Rocky Mountains, the Ranch lake and an exhale-inspiring expanse of green lawn, you can do nothing more than drink in the views or – as you’re inspired to – take a swim, go for a hike, indulge in a nap, take a turn at the rope swing, or whatever your heart desires.

Summer days in Montana are usually comfortably warm.  The nights are chillier lit brilliantly from above.  The Ranch grounds offer a palette of the greens, blues, browns, and creamy hues that color the days.  At night, you’ll have a front row seat to savor a Big Sky awning glimmering with stars.

Main Lodge

The Main Lodge is the centerpiece of the Ranch. The spacious main room has fully equipped yoga walls, a diverse library up in the loft, and a full wall of windows offering views of expansive green lawn, a spring-fed lake, and Rocky Mountains all around.

The elk above the fireplace is an enchanting Feathered Pipe Ranch legend all in itself. The story about why there is an elk above the fireplace is a Ranch legend all in itself. It’s a tale about the Feathered Pipe’s history and spirit that you’ll not soon forget.

The Main Lodge also houses four lovingly appointed dorm-style guest rooms (sleep 3 people), each with their own private bathroom.

Workshop classes are held in the Main Lodge mornings and afternoons at most retreats, with ample free time built into your schedule for hiking, dining, swimming, sauna’ing, bodywork, or whatever you most need to restore, recharge, refresh, and relax.

The Kitchen!

If the spirit of the ranch is captured anywhere, it’s most definitely in the kitchen that’s attached to the Main Lodge.  Our specialty is wholesome, natural food using recipes from all over the globe. We strive to use whole, organic ingredients prepared with a commitment to health and well-being. Whenever possible, we use locally grown and raised organic food sources to support a sustainable, healthy community.

The Feathered Pipe staff pours great love and care into the preparation of every one of our guest meals.  If you have any special dietary needs or restrictions, simply let us know when you fill out the guest information form before your arrival.  We’ll make sure you have all the healthy, delicious fare you need for every meal.

The food at the Ranch is the stuff of legend. Our recipes are so popular and so often requested that we went ahead and created our very own cookbook – you can pick it up at the Shanti Boutique or get your digital copy here. 

Our talented cooks are continually creating and updating dishes, drawing inspiration from a variety of sources from around the world.

More than a few of our guests over the years tell us, just before departing, that perhaps they’ll miss the exquisite Feathered Pipe meals most of all.  If you ever tasted our chocolate chip cookies, you know what they mean!

Dining Room

The light filled dining hall – just a few steps away from the Main Lodge and the neighboring Chalet – is where you’ll enjoy some of the tastiest meals you’ll ever have the pleasure to eat.  Keep an ear open for the strains of the the “it’s meal time!” bell and you’ll know it’s time to make your way to the dining hall for a wholesome and lip-smacking breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

Fill up your plate and sit under the pine beams and savor the views from the dining hall.  Or toddle on over to one of our picnic tables to dine in the open air.

The dining hall also serves as the main area for public wi-fi internet service. The speed otherwise is sufficient to conduct typical internet activities, but please no streaming videos or music. you are on retreat, yes? Wi-fi can also be accessed outdoors within reasonable range of the dining hall or Lake Cabin which both have open wi-fi routers.

The Chalet

The Ranch Chalet is a natural gathering place and features some of our most coveted indoor lodging rooms.  Guests like to sit in the afternoon shade of the Chalet on big Adirondack chairs gazing at the lake and mountains, inhaling fresh mountain air and swapping stories with staff or fellow guests.

The Chalet is home to the Shanti Boutique, owned and operated by India Supera’s daughter, Crystal Water – a radiant being who was born and raised right here at Feathered Pipe. Crystal’s Boutique is a one-of-a-kind retail shop offering its very own jewelry line, Feathered Pipe t-shirts, souvenirs, yoga clothes, props, books, chocolates, shawls and a host of other unique items, including whatever essentials you may have forgotten to pack.

Bathhouse

Tucked under a canopy of trees and accessible by easy foot trails connecting all the outdoor lodging spaces with the main Ranch grounds is our clean, homey bathhouse.

Open to all guests, the bathhouse has a new hot tub, a cedar sauna, showers, and personal cubbies for outdoor lodgers to store their personal items.

The bathhouse is also the spot to be on the Ranch for massage and bodywork. Our practitioners offer a broad range of modalities that enrich our guest’s Feathered Pipe experience with relaxation and healing.

Your stay at the Feathered Pipe Ranch includes access to our extensive grounds and all the amenities that our pretty bathhouse has to offer.

There are so many ways to relax and restore at the Ranch, and while everyone settles their own cadence and rhythm, many guests find that they appreciate the ritual of winding down the day with a a soothing sauna or a long soak in the hot tub. Perhaps add in some evening bodywork –  and by the time the stars come out, you can meander slowly back to your lodging in the hush of a Montana night, ushering your day to a soft close and a tender night’s sleep.

Rustic Lodging

Tents, cabins, tipis, and yurts dot the mountain terrain all around the Ranch and offer guests who appreciate the outdoor experience a chance to take pleasure in the sights, scents, textures, and sounds of Mother Nature up close.

All of our outdoor lodging is designed and maintained for comfort – wooden cots, mattresses and toasty sleeping bags keep you off the ground and warm.  You’ll have everything you need to stay warm and dry during our chilly Montana summer nights.

Visit our accommodations page to see and learn more about your lodging choices at the Feathered Pipe Ranch. Feel free to look at a Ranch map here to get a better idea of the layout of various lodging choices.

The Wilderness

Time steeped in this environment is a force multiplier for supporting the experience of a Feathered Pipe workshop retreat as body, mind, and spirit absorb the benefits of time with your teachers and fellow guests surrounded by the wildness and tenderness of nature.  The Ranch rests in the heart of nearly a million acres of unspoiled Rocky Mountain wilderness in the Helena National Forest. Well-marked trails thread through the surrounding environs of the Ranch and are ideal for exploring highland wildflower meadows, mysterious foothills on sacred ground, and mountain tops where vistas of Montana’s Big Sky can be savored in full, humbling glory.

Whether your idea of relaxation is a casual stroll in nature or an adventurous backwoods hike, the wilderness surrounding Feathered Pipe offers you an experience of the natural world that’s customized for your desires.  Long-forgotten mining trails, remnants of old homesteads, gurgling mountain brooks emptying into unknown lakes – all this and so much more waits patiently for your gentle exploring footsteps. See Feathered Pipe trail maps here.

The Nature Deck

A blend of inquiry, creativity, and generosity gave birth to the Nature Deck. It was the same alchemy that for decades provided the inspiration for so many of the surprising sweet touches and amenities you’ll find tucked into so many corners of the 110-acre Ranch.

The 1028-square-foot redwood deck now rests on the western hillside above the lake. It affords an airy, often breezy, dappled shaded area with a 360-degree view of the most captivating features of the Ranch: the lake, the stupa, mountain ridges, and forest. A retractable shade sail canopy above offers protection from strong midday sun on those corners of the Deck not already shaded by trees. The Nature Deck is easy to access via a very short, groomed trail that winds upslope from the creek footbridge.

Stupa

Stroll across the lawn past Lake House, cross a small wooden footbridge over a stream that feeds the lake, and step onto a pretty path next to a splash of extravagant wildflowers.  Make a left into the trees just above Lake Tipi to the sacred ground of the Feathered Pipe stupa.

This prayer-flag-drenched space offers repose among the Buddha statues that encircle a rocky outcropping in the shade of lodgepole pines. The stupa is adjacent to a wildflower meadow that blossomed in recent years following the shift in our landscape that came about after mountain pine beetles had their way with so many Montana trees.

Now flush with new growth and small trees, the meadow near the stupa – and indeed much of the surrounding Ranch environs – is awash in wildflowers.

Clover. Yarrow. Indian paintbrush. Bearberries. Harebell.  Gentian. Coralroot.  Spirea.  Forget-Me-Not. Prickly pear.  Goat’s beard.  Owl-clover. Bergamot.

And after a nice rain – as much lupine dot the ranch landscape and Peace Garden as you’ve ever seen.

The Main Lawn

And after a day of wandering within or without there is the main lawn with plenty of room to just kick back and relax with no place to go or be except right here, right now!

Share a sunset with a friend as the swallows dart across the lake. So many colors you never imagined at the end of the day.

And then a canvas of perfect darkness dusted with countless shimmering stars.

Wait long enough and you might just catch a falling star or the Aurora Borealis dancing across the sky in her wisps of pink, green and yellow.

Explore our current Feathered Pipe Health, Wellness and Yoga Retreat schedule here.