Overview

Winter is the longest and most defining season in the North. With snowy days and dark nights, this season is a time both for outdoor adventure and for gathering to share traditions, meals, and stories.

The Winterers’ Gathering & Arctic Film Festival celebrates the crafts, customs, history, and stories that have been inspired by winter. Featuring winter-centric coursework, a winter tent camp, gear sale, film festival, speakers, and more, this is a classic event to welcome the start of the chilliest season.

The 2025 Winterers’ Gathering will welcome featured speaker Dr. Paul Bierman, a geoscientist, environmental historian, and writer focused on the interaction of people and Earth’s dynamic surface, especially in Greenland and other climate hotspots. Dr. Bierman will teach a workshop and offer a public talk Greenland’s Value is its Ice on Saturday, November 22 at 7pm.

Event Details

See a selection of program highlights below and check back here for updates this fall.

Weekend Highlights

All Weekend

Presentations

Event Seminars are 45 minute presentations that cover a variety of winter-related topics: from camping tips to travelogues, cultural reflections to winter sport secrets, these inspiring talks offer something for everyone and take place throughout the weekend. Check this page later this fall for seminar details.

Skill Share Demonstrations

These short intensive sessions focus on particularly handy skills. Dress for a partially heated environment. Free to attend, materials fee occasionally applies, payable at door. Blacksmith Shop. Check this page later this fall for skill share details.

Arctic Film Festival

This one-of-a-kind festival features films from around the globe that visually tell the story of the North. Documentaries, features and shorts showcase arctic landscapes, traditional cultures, northern adventures and changing climates. All film screenings are free and held in the Blue Building. Check this page later this fall for the film schedule.

Friday Highlights

Friday, November 21

Open Fire Dinner on a Stick & Outdoor Shorts Film Festival

Gather around a bonfire and cook over an open fire as a community. Participants bring their own food; we’ll provide the fire and the pointy sticks. Sausages to steaks, pudgie pies to home fries, it’s all welcome. Beginning at 6:00pm, we’ll enjoy a selection of winter-themed short films.

Snowshoe Shuffle Traditional Community Contra Dance

6:30pm family dance, 7:30pm community dance

Don your winter wardrobe and warm up at this friendly community contra dance. The dance takes place in the historic timbered woodshop.

Cold Snap Poetry Slam

Cold Snap Poetry Slam is a friendly celebration of the spoken word and the glories of the frozen North! Join in the fun by reading one of your own works or any selected seasonal poetry of your choosing. By sharing your favorite hibernal verse, presenters will receive wide recognition as cultural icons, as well as a free bottomless bag of popcorn for the weekend! Check back later this fall for information on registering.

Saturday Highlights

Saturday, November 22

The Great Gear & Ski Sale

Bring your outdoor equipment to sell or get in on some great bargains & buy. Registration forms to sell your gear are ready. Backcountry skis to winter canvas tents. Ice skates to kites. Winter boots to down jackets. All are welcome.

The Deep Freeze Chili Feed

Bundle up and grab your bowl for this traditional winter favorite: chili & freshly baked cornbread. Hot chili (your choice: vegetarian or meat) is cooked up in the kettle and enjoyed in the company of other hearty winterers. Details coming later this fall!

Featured Speaker: Dr. Paul Bierman

Saturday, 7pm

Greenland’s Value Is Its Ice

In a surprising turn of events for many, Greenland has become ground-zero for climate change and expansionist desires to grow American influence in the north. But this is not new: in the 1950s and 1960s, the island was central to America’s Cold War strategy. Featured Speaker Dr. Paul Bierman will examine Greenland through the lens of both natural and human history focusing on Camp Century, a nuclear-powered US military base inside the ice sheet. There, Army drillers completed the first deep ice core and from beneath the ice, recovered 12 feet of frozen soil filled with plant and insect fossils: evidence that Greenland’s ice had once vanished before. Unless we address climate change, that ice will melt again, raising global sea level as much as 25 feet and forcing half a billion people to migrate. Dr. Bierman will share vintage photographs, film, and video and include short readings from his new book, When the Ice is Gone: What a Greenland Ice Core Reveals About Earth’s Tumultuous History and Perilous Future.

Professor Paul Bierman is a geoscientist, environmental historian, and writer at the University of Vermont. Both his research and teaching focus on the interaction of people and Earth’s dynamic surface. He is particularly interested in working at the interface between active research, education, and science literacy at all levels. Bierman currently has active research projects in both the tropics (Cuba, Puerto Rico) and the arctic (Greenland). When the Ice is Gone (WW Norton, 2024), his book about the history and future of the Greenland Ice Sheet, is a New Yorker Best Book selection and was featured in the New York Times and on Minnesota Public Radio.