Sauna

Now I’m picturing the sauna and coming over across the hill--no snow, I think, but the lake goes back and forth between open water in fall and frozen black and smooth in winter.

I see snowflakes begin to fall--I love that deep, pervasive, natural, holy and wholesome quiet--of no one being on the lake--that’s an amazing feeling and hard to fully understand here where there is no true wilderness in my mind--hmm--interesting meaning without the comma.

The feeling of walking through the cold--I do miss that kind of cold--not cold indoors but a right and natural cold outside. The layers tucked in correctly and generally feeling I am in the right landscape--by dressing like that, with big boots and the long johns and wintergreen pants, the base layers and thick sweater, the good hat and mittens and scarf-- I feel at peace with the landscape.

That hill, short as it is with all the new growth. The bare brown of the landscape. the sauna puffing smoke steadily up--the awareness of skin because I will soon be naked and sweating in a glorious, womb-like warmth and then running down the ramp and jumping into the lake. I like all that texture: the weight and fit of the well-worn and broken-in clothes, not dressing for fashion but feeling very good and healthy as a form of beauty, simplicity. I like the texture of the landscape and all its roughness and spikiness that really can be soft like spruce needles or when covered with snow. Then the feel of cedar on bare feet, the feel of air on skin like hot breath. I like the way the steam circles the sauna interior like a slap that is longed for. I like the relative darkness of the sauna, the glow of the fire when stoking it with wood rough in the pile, how cold the air at the bottom is, how hot at the top. The sting of the hot, dry boards on the wall.

After the plunge the amazing sense of oneness with the cold that is suddenly not colder than, only Cold. Lungs tasting sweet air and mixing hot and cold air, snowflakes falling, aching cold in ankles and feet making me step in place and eventually run back up the ramp. The absence of shame, the sensation of real cleanness, and then the delicious, forgiving absolution of returning to the warmth, the thirst for water, wringing out of saturated socks and bare feet on wood again. I would be married in a sauna by steam and cold water if I could.

-Rose Arrowsmith DeCoux, 28 December 2011

This was written in my Morning Pages--three pages of stream of consciousness written first thing in the morning everyday. It is rare that I share this writing because it's a form of meditation (and most often a lot of griping). I've edited very little because I like the MP feel it has. It's written about the sauna on Dominion Island at Wilderness Canoe Base, where I lived from 2008-2011 before moving to India.