About the Wheels
Designed for Beauty and Durability
Construction of the Wheels
Neil Windsor is our wheel designer. He envisioned installing prayer wheels on all the “Bridges of the Butte,” a representative place of impermanence, transition, and contemplation. Neil’s home entryway is a bridge over Coal Creek, decorated with prayer flags and a traditional Nepali Prayer Wheel. Today, his bridge is also the home of our CB wheel prototype.
An Innovative, Winter-Worthy Design
Neil thought about using recycled materials, but his sculptural art background taught him that the wheels needed to be Crested Butte winter-fied. They needed to be kid-friendly with no sharp edges and easily duplicated at a minimal cost. Neil set to work and created a basic design using 8 inch PVC pipe with a top and bottom cap. On his prototype wheel, he cut a sheet of metal flashing, primed it, and painted the view of Red Lady from his house. Next, he installed a recycled, clear Lexan panel over the top of his wheel to protect it from snow while allowing sunlight to illuminate the wheel. Ben Eaton, a local metal-smith artist, engineered the metal mounting bracket. When the fully assembled prototype successfully weathered two winters on Neil’s bridge, he knew the CB Wheels were ready to launch. Caroline and Neil recruited eight teams to create designs and visions for our wheels.
The Inner Workings of Our Wheels
Along our project journey, we began to learn more about the inner workings of prayer wheels. Karma and Chimey Lama, owners of Tashi Delek Momo, told us that we needed a sacred tree of life pole/spindle and a scroll of mantras to activate our community intentions/prayers. We honored their wishes and tradition, located a “tree of life” artist, and a scroll of mantras arrived in our hands, seemingly bestowed by synchronicity.
Inside our Wheels is a “Tree of Life” spindle, made from locally sourced wood, painted and inscribed with sacred mantras by Lama Gyurme Rabges – a Tibetan artist from Santa Fe, NM. These mantras cultivate seeds of goodness and good fortune, and through this project, we honor our interconnections with other mountain cultures. Together, we celebrate our mountain majesties. They are the sentinels of our communities and our way of life.
Wrapped around each “Tree of Life” spindle are a traditional prayer scroll and a scroll of anonymous, verbatim intentions received by our community. You can contribute your own intentions for phase 2 by emailing us at info@cbwheelsofintention.org. See our Intention page for ideas on how to create your intention.
We welcome you to tour our wheels. Release our intentions and your intentions of good tidings and love into our mountain ethers! Smile, appreciate, and lean into something beautiful.