Our home base will be in either Lame Deer at the Head Start building or in Birney Village. Lame Deer is the central commercial and governmental town on the reservation. Twenty miles southeast of Lame Deer. It is a tiny traditional community of about 50 families nestled on the Tongue River, a quiet, peaceful, special place, affording 360-degree views of the landscape and uninterrupted views of the spectacular sunsets. Our dear friends Florence and Mike Running Wolf live in Birney Village, and we see a lot of them and their extended family throughout the program. In Birney there are no stores, gas stations or any other commercial services. These are to be had in Lame Deer or Ashland, a town about 20 minutes farther east on the edge of the reservation boundary.

You will live with your VISIONS leaders, and boys and girls will sleep in separate rooms on six-inch air mattresses on the floor in sleeping bags. There will be bathrooms, hot water showers, and we do laundry in town once a week.

Five days a week, after breakfast, you will head off to work on your chosen project for the day. We typically work a few hours every day with short breaks and at least one hour for lunch. A rotating group of three or four students and one staffer may stay back from projects each day for what we call "home base crew.” The crew tidies up and cleans our living space, collects the mail, prepares lunch, and helps our cook with dinner preparations and clean-up afterwards. Home base crew might join another work crew later in the day.

After work there always is time before dinner for other activities, such as a short hike, swimming, showering, playing with local kids, or simply just relaxing. Several evenings each week after dinner, we set aside time to meet as a group of volunteers. This is a slow-down time to speak and listen to each other, share our reactions to the day or iron out occasional issues together. Once a week, everyone has the opportunity to call home.

There are constant opportunities to explore and learn about Northern Cheyenne culture, to mix and mingle with community members. We will join in a sweat lodge and spend a day at the Northern Cheyenne 4th of July Chief’s Pow Wow where the Running Wolf’s set up a tipi for us at their long-time encampment. The pow wow is a three-day gathering and celebration, similar to a family reunion, where tribal members, and relatives from other tribes, come together to dance in traditional dress (called regalia), listen to drumming, play stick games, eat and enjoy each others’ company.

Our longtime Cheyenne friends will tell you stories and share their culture, make frybread and berry pudding for you, teach you how to do simple traditional beading. You will hear the native tongue spoken by our closest friends. You will visit St. Labre Mission in Ashland, one of the largest and most active Indian Schools in the West.

On weekends, we’ll go backpacking and hiking in the beautiful Big Horn Mountains or Beartooth Mountains. We’ll go swimming and sight-seeing and spend a day touring Montana’s biggest city, Billings, maybe take in a movie and a mall visit. And you will visit the Big Horn Battlefield, a historic site, where Custer’s Last Stand happened.