The beaver moon rises tonight, named for the time when beavers are frantically fortifying their lodges and storing food before the waters freeze. They’re executing a seasonal protocol hardwired into their operating system. Winter is coming, and they know it.

We’re not so different. November sits at that awkward threshold between autumn’s productivity and winter’s necessary dormancy. The year isn’t over, but the light is fading fast. Your energy reserves are likely running low. The holiday season looms with its complex mix of obligation and (hopefully) joy.

This is your moment to check your systems before dimming the lights, knowing that the work you do now makes the darker months more bearable. True rest and hibernation don’t really exist in the modern human world, but at least give yourself permission to take your foot off the gas. As someone said, if you don’t take time to rest, your body will eventually do it for you. Every living thing needs to hunker down from time to time. We may no longer be facing down starvation or freezing to death, but we still need a cozy place to land for a time.

What Your Winter Lodge Needs

Take inventory of the structures that support you when things get hard:

• Physical stores - Do you have your comfort foods, your preferred tea, the supplies that help you weather the seasonal shift?
• Emotional fortifications - Which relationships need tending before the holiday chaos? What boundaries need reinforcing?
• Mental reserves - What rituals keep you grounded? What can you prepare now so your depleted December self doesn’t have to?
• Time architecture - Where can you build in buffer time? What commitments can you decline now to protect your energy later?

The beaver doesn’t wait for the freeze to make a safe space to hunker down in. Neither should you.

Check your lodge. Reinforce what needs reinforcing. Store what needs storing.

2025 Beaver Moon

This year is the biggest moon of 2025. The biggest since 2019. I know that if you’re reading this, you are likely feeling the chaos of the world. Maybe take this meteorological factor as a sign that the Beaver Moon is especially significant this year. Don’t panic, do prepare. For myself, yes I am prepping for this winter to build myself a cozy lodge. But I am also taking it as the theme of this year into the next, and even into the spring when we hit the renewal part of the cycle. It might be the life stage that I’m in, or it might be the state of the world, but I am much more focused on my home base than I used to be.