Wearing only a swimsuit, I stand at the edge of the Deschutes River in the first major snowstorm of Bend, Oregon’s winter season.

“Try not to hesitate!” Halina Kowalski-Thompson, founder of Gather Sauna House, calls. “Right now. Go all the way out.” I walk forward, the water surging over my feet then my calves then my thighs. It’s so cold, it feels like fire searing my toes.

“Start working on your breath,” Gather's founder coaches. “When you’re ready to get down, take one deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth like you’re blowing through a straw and sink.”

I bend my knees and drop below the surface. Otter pose is the goal, lying on your back with your feet and hands out of the water—in temperatures this cold, they’re the first to lose feeling as blood rushes to stabilize the body’s core. But it takes everything I have just to squat awkwardly, chest-deep, and focus on my breath.

Other than the burning embers where my toes used to be, it’s not so bad, actually.

A two-minute plunge is all it takes to reap benefits like increased metabolism and reduced inflammation and pain. I make it maybe 30 seconds. Still, dopamine floods my system with joy and gratitude as I stomp back to shore and up the shallow slope to Gather.

The Baltic-style portable sauna lives in Bend’s Riverbend Park from late September through May, providing private and weekly community thermal contrast therapy sessions. Inside, in front of the wood-fire stove, Kowalski-Thompson uses pine branches like gentle monster hands to restore the heat to our skin and offers us fresh herbs to stimulate our senses of smell, Latvian traditions she learned while studying the art of sauna abroad.

Gather is a spoke on the wheel of this winter wellness weekend in Central Oregon’s beautiful high desert, two days of mindfulness and healing revolving around Juniper Preserve. Recent rebranding has transformed the resort, once known best for the two golf courses on its estate, into a restorative sanctuary for mind, body, and spirit.

Our goal is “helping people to live better quality lives for longer,” says Maddison Stephens, who moved from Los Angeles to serve as Juniper’s first director of wellness. Over the summer, she guided the launch of a new customizable wellness retreat program which gives individuals, couples, and small and large groups the opportunity to tailor the itinerary for their stay to their specific needs and interests.

There’s a virtually endless array of activities at the resort and in its adjacent 20,000-acre juniper forest—the largest in North America—ranging from yoga to breathwork, spa services to acupuncture, hiking to cave exploration. If the thing you need most is to spend 48-hours wrapped in a plush robe in one of the lodge’s serene earth-toned rooms catching up on sleep in a cloud-soft bed piled with pillows, they’ll make sure your sound machine and scent diffuser are primed and ready to go.

For things they don’t offer on site, Juniper Preserve partners with local businesses including Gather Sauna House and the SoundMind Institute, which provides psychedelic therapy. In the wintery wonderland, I go on a guided snowshoe with Wanderlust Tours through Deschutes National Forest that ends with a yoga session in a warming hut lit with fairy lights and a roaring fire. In summer, it could have just as easily been a moon- and star-lit canoe on a nearby alpine lake.

With the snow falling relentlessly through my stay, Juniper’s classes are mercifully indoors for the season, where the heat chugs along at a steady 68 degrees Fahrenheit. At the intention setting ceremony, we reflect on our aspirations for the weekend of wellness with mugs of steaming ceremonial-grade cacao, then put them into practice during the mindful movement class. In morning yoga, we flow gently through poses then dive into breathwork exercises meant to reduce stress, increase energy levels, and improve focus.

The sound bath that follows is the most intensely hallucinatory I’ve ever experienced, the first time (out of a few tries) that I’ve ever actually “gotten it,” the vibration and frequency of the singing bowls washing my brain clean. When the weather is warmer, the sound bath sometimes migrates inside the property’s natural lava tube for what’s got to be one of the most unique auditory experiences in the country.

At the spa, there are decadent massages and facials, plus Ayurvedic treatments, body wraps, and scrubs, anti-aging light therapy, and cupping. They can even add a sound bath or guided breathwork to your therapy—and soon they’ll be debuting a new, state-of-the-art facility to do it all even better.

Juniper’s holistic approach to wellness includes the property’s main restaurant, Iris, which just reopened with a modern mountain aesthetic and a menu sourced from local farmers and producers. The former steakhouse still makes a mean ribeye, but its menu now includes thoughtful lighter fare like heirloom beet and apple salad with pistachio brittle and burrata and Hokkaido sea scallops with truffled cauliflower mousse. The swanky Blue Bar next door does brioche chard and manchego avocado toast at breakfast, veggie-rich grain bowls at lunch, quick and shareable eats at dinner like the dip and meat mashup mezze-cuterie board, and curated cocktails anytime the mood strikes.

Read more about Juniper Preserve

Juniper Preserve
65600 Pronghorn Club Drive
Bend, OR 97701

Directions: View Map
Visit: JuniperPreserve.com
Reservations: 866.320.5024