All summer long, I have eagerly anticipated this week. I have a cottage rental on the lake. It’s the highlight of my summer, and a much-needed break from all of the projects I have going on. This year, in addition to the usual activities—swimming, canoeing, beach fires, collecting beach glass, and just staring into the waves while sipping wine—I’ve added one more Sauna! I’ve brought my wood-fired trailer sauna with me and parked it ten feet from the water’s edge. Nothing beats coming out from the hot steam of a good löyly and jumping into the cool, refreshing lake. It is perfection.
Mobile Sauna by Rob Licht Custom Saunas on Cayuga Lake
My good friend Daniel has come home for a few days so we decided to take the trailer sauna down to Podunk, his family’s homestead, where, as a youth, I was indoctrinated in the way of the sauna. The old shack built by the original Finnish owner of the property has long since gone to the squirrels. But our memories of sauna-ing on cool summer evenings are still as vivid as the lush green canopies of the giant poplar trees that stand as sentinels in the field by the riverbank, keeping the creek from advancing any further as it swishes across the valley. On a geologic scale, the creek—the same that carved the falls at Taughannock—slithers like a snake, back and forth, carving new paths over years and decades. In our short lives, we can remember when it made this turn or that, turning a rocky bank into an inviting swim hole or turning the old dipping spot—the one we would run down to from that old sauna, hooting and hollering—into a rocky shallow.
There is a new swim hole now. It’s an Olympic-sized pool compared to what we used to dip in, allowing for real swimming as opposed to the slow rolls we used to take in the knee deep water just below where the pipeline crosses. As we lay there with our heads pulsing from the effect we called being sauna stoned, minnows nibbled on our fresh cooked skin. With this new hole, the creek is more perfect for a sauna now than it was then.
I parked the trailer just on the edge of the bank and fired it up. The fact that it was close to the creek, where the spring high water often lapped the trunks of the poplars, did not matter; this was a temporary affair, a brief encounter with our youth, a dip into the pool of nostalgia. Once it was hot, we climbed aboard and were transported back in time some forty years. My little stove holds a hundred pounds of rocks, all glacial erratics, transported here by the great river of ice in a time before memory. When heated, those rocks are capable of producing the best löyly, letting off a burst of steam that sends us out the door and clambering down the banks to the sweet cool water of the creek. It’s impossible not to let out a few whoops.
As a respite to the maddening distractions and over-stimulation of our times, people often seek out authentic experiences. There is often an understated desire to eschew technology and the associated flotsam that pollutes our memories of a simpler time. We laugh when we try to remember when phones were attached to the wall and being accessible meant you checked your answering machine only once a day. Life was slower and I don’t think there is anyone over forty who can’t appreciate that. As far as traditions go, not much can beat the sauna, which has a two-thousand-plus year history.
Often, clients come to me seeking some sort of authentic experience—often tied to some childhood sauna at a summer lake-house or a weekly family ritual. They don’t want just an ordinary gym or hotel sauna, they want an experience deeper and more profound, something central to this notion of life slowing down. I imagine sauna as a slow-moving cinematic experience that is the complete antithesis to Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi film about life out of balance. In the sauna, the heat should melt not only the bodily stress of the day but also the sense of time itself. To be authentic, the experience should not follow a prescribed formula but should simply be what naturally evolves in a Zen-like way of intentional non-intention.
What evolves naturally depends upon the built environment. Like cathedrals, which were designed to encourage spirituality, I build my saunas to encourage contemplation. It’s not just the temperature of the room, but the details that your hand or eye will settle on. The arched roof, views out the window, and selected grain of the boards provide visual distraction so your mind can settle into the experience while your body adjusts to the heat. The surfaces, sounds, and smells of the sauna are meant to awaken your senses.
When I am in the sauna I think about this, but I also try to think about nothing! I simply do what comes naturally— sweat, pour water on the rocks, cool down, look at the night sky, repeat, and then wash up. There is no magical order to the ritual, no rules to adhere to; the point is to create your own. I cannot create for my clients an authentic experience, but I can provide the catalyst in the form of a hot little magical space.
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