Week 1: Initiation into Wintering

This week, we’ll step into the tender threshold of winter. Wintering is not simply enduring; it’s an art form, a deliberate descent into stillness. Together, we’ll explore animism as a way of being woven into the world, where all things—stones, rivers, and even the frostbite on tree bark—carry stories, spirits, and wisdom.

What We’ll Do:

• Sit in stillness: What does winter ask of your body, your breath, your spirit?

• Begin journaling: What is winter to you? A wound, a refuge, a reckoning?

• Explore: What would it mean to treat this season as a conversation, not an obstacle?

Week 2: Embracing the Stillness of Winter

Winter slows the world down, stretches silence, thickens the weave of mystery.”

Winter asks for patience, for an attunement to the near-invisible rhythms beneath the snow. This week, we’ll apprentice ourselves to the quiet. We’ll listen to the unseen lives of plants and animals in the season of retreat. Stillness is not nothingness; it’s a reservoir of possibility.

What We’ll Do:

• Go outside: What stories does the land tell when most of the voices are muffled by snow?

• Observe: The hibernation of animals, the way frost etches windows, the whispers of wind.

• Journal: How can your stillness mimic the stillness of nature, not as emptiness, but as gestation?

Week 3: The Spirit of Place 

To truly winter is to fall in love with where you are, as it is, in its frostbitten nakedness.”

Winter is a cartographer, redrawing the map of our lives. The spirit of place—what some call animism—is most vivid in this season. The land becomes a teacher when its vitality is pared back to essentials. This week, we’ll explore the personality of the winter world we inhabit.

What We’ll Do:

• Make a “spirit map” of your local landscape. Include the bare trees, the sharp-angled light, the pathways carved by animals.

• Write a love letter to a winter spirit: the frost that laces your window, the stream that hasn’t yet frozen solid, the shadow of a bird overhead.

• Discuss: How does your land change in winter? How does it change you?

Week 4: Rituals as Conversation

Rituals are the punctuation marks in the run-on sentence of a season. They let us pause and pay attention.”

Winter calls us to ritual, not as performance, but as a way to open channels of reciprocity. This week, we’ll create rituals to honor the spirits of winter—the snow, the cold, the slumbering roots—and to tether ourselves to the earth’s slow exhale.

What We’ll Do:

• Create a winter altar: Collect fallen twigs, frost-touched leaves, stones smoothed by ice.

• Light a candle at dusk and whisper gratitude to the early dark through a gratitude ceremony

• Share: What rituals can tether you to winter’s rhythms rather than resisting them?

Week 5: Animal Companions in the Cold

“In winter, animals become archetypes, their survival strategies maps for our own.”

The bear, the fox, the owl—they are more than themselves. They are metaphors, myths, guides. Winter sharpens their presence. This week, we’ll learn from these beings: their hibernation, their endurance, their play.

What We’ll Do:

• Connect:  “What animal is walking beside me this winter?”

• Observe: They have been companioning you throughout your winter cycles. Notice the tracks in the snow, the flit of wings, the gnawed bark on trees.

• Reflect: What animal qualities do you need to borrow this season? Stillness? Fierceness? Quiet resourcefulness?

Week 6: Weaving the Threads

“Wintering is not an end but a beginning disguised as dormancy.”

As the season deepens, we’ll gather the threads of our wintering. Winter teaches that endings are never complete; they are the fertile ground for transformation. This week, we’ll honor what we’ve learned and begin to imagine how these insights will ripple into spring.

What We’ll Do:

• Create an intention bundle: Collect small, meaningful objects—seeds, twigs, feathers—to symbolize what you’re carrying forward.

• Write a reflection: How has winter changed you? How has it softened you?

• Gather: Share your journey with the group. What will you take with you as the light begins its slow return??