Having grown up around the waters of Cayuga Lake, whose long finger touched the shores of my childhood stomping grounds, it is no wonder that our dreams often turned to things nautical. Since we first started taking saunas at Podunk in our early teens, the fantasy topic of floating saunas always came up. We loved swimming in the lake, but its waters are only warm enough to swim from the beginning of July to about mid- September. What a better way to extend that season than with a sauna? What a better way to sauna than not just near the water, but on the water (oh, but we did enjoy the naked runs to the creek!)
I’ve had an ongoing affair with boats: I have a love of canoes that goes back to my discovery of the Adirondack waterways which form an almost continuous route from civilization into the deep wilderness, and back; the caveat being that short carries were required.
I started making one years ago: a strip canoe affair. Not strip, as in naked, but “strip” as in thin bands of cedar, all joined and sandwiched between two epoxy and fiberglass layers. I never finished that boat; its progress was aborted midstream after I broke my collar bone in three during a trail running race. The unfinished shell still looms over my shop as a reminder, high up in a loft space. So, suffice it to say, that when a client approached me about building a much bigger boat, I had my hesitations about my luck with boats.
Mark initially wanted a beachfront sauna. Then zoning and other issues steered us to thinking of a floating sauna. My childhood fantasy! Granted it is not a new idea; in fact, there are several in Norway and other places. But on Cayuga Lake? This was to be a first. It made sense, in a fantastical way. He had ample dockage, and limited beach; he was willing to invest in the idea and take the risk, and he was a nice guy with just enough chutzpah to make it happen.
Client Mark and Family on Maiden Voyage of Sauna Boat, Cayuga Lake, New York.
The Design phase took over a year. It was a real challenge because this is not just carpentry but nautical engineering; precision was required, and my hand-drawn methodology needed some sharper pencils. Some 30 pages of drawings later and we were ready to build. We had a great fabricator for the frame, ladder-stair, and railing (Service Machine Tool in Elmira, NY) and some other great help along the way, but the whole thing—all 26 feet of it— was assembled in the shop. It was a challenge as the beast took over—floor to ceiling—and there was a lot of self doubt along the way to trip over.
I am not a boat builder so there was as much learning as doing, but we pulled it off—including the challenging work of four round cedar windows trimmed with real ship-salvage portholes.
There were a lot of other finicky details (I have come to understand that boat building is all finicky details). The biggest challenge was loading and transporting it on an oversize low-boy flatbed truck. At one point we had the 10,000-pound hulk levitating on three forklifts as the low-boy flatbed backed under it. The guys at Lansing Harbor Marina gave us confidence, especially after it passed its initial float test. After a few months of tweaking we took the maiden voyage, complete with a champagne toast.
The unique thing with our sauna is that it is a fully navigational boat with twin Electric motors and the sauna is fired with a gas fired heater and has 12-volt electric lights powered by a solar system. Ideally it will be used on a calm day when you can drift out to the middle of the lake, sauna, jump into the clear waters, cool off on the roof deck, and repeat until the fantasy has been satiated. Maybe even under the stars, or Northern Lights.
Thanks to everyone who helped make this possible, Especially Scarlet, who believed in the dream, and Mark and Karie, who supported it.
One the endearing features of our saunas that falls under the rustic elegant motif that we employ is the use of stick hardware. These also fall under the category of Finnish Pragmatism that is an influence in my design; whereas superfluous embellishment is avoided and using what is at hand is always desired over spending for what you don’t really need. In my head I keep an inventory of all the random parts I have collected over the years that are stowed away in my shop and when a need arises I quickly do a mental scan and see if something in stock will do rather than going to a hardware store or jumping online. Likewise, I often resort to “natures hardware store” when I need things like door pulls and towel hooks.
It is amazing all the parts you can extricate from the intricate workings of tree.
The best is Hickory because of the way branches crook when they take off in a new direction, and it is very hard. After all, they make baseball bats out it. Recently we had to fell a Hickory so I salvaged all the door pulls and towel hooks I could from it.
wood-fired outdoor sauna
The tree will live on as it greets sauna users with a sturdy handshake each time they enter the sauna.
It’s the small personal touches and attention to detail that makes us proud of our work and makes our work fun and enjoyable. By avoiding the cold and the common place, we make each sauna as unique as its owners.
The latest sauna that we built is an indoor electric affair in a new addition that also holds a hot tub and pool, an enviable personal home spa combination. It has an ample window and large 10 kw Harvia Cilindro heater that should make the top bench a real hot spot. A feature of this sauna that I love is the view from that bench. Not just any view, but one that takes me back to my childhood.
The property is located on the eastern shoulder of Cayuga Lake, at a point where the land starts to dip dramatically downward to the long snaking shore. The slope is so steep here, that you don’t see the lake, only the opposite side, a little more than two miles away. Someone unfamiliar with our landscape might not even be aware that the longest of the Finger Lakes fills the glacial trough below. While the scene feels close, it is, in fact, a long journey away.
Most pronounced is Rice Hill: the old ski and sledding hill that, at one time had a rope tow run off of an old tractor motor. At the top of the hill is a warming hut and two shallow ice rinks, where many a hockey game was played. When we were too broke or didn’t have the ambition or means to go to the closest downhill ski area, we would go to Rice Hill and practice our ess turns. I also recall many tobogganing adventures; it was the kind of hill where serious injuries where the mark of a good run.
Just to the north was a ten-acre parcel my parents bought in the 1960’s with the dream of building a house. My dad designed it with all the meticulous detail he employed on his larger architectural projects. It was a three story modernist affair, with a flat roof, and cantilevered balconies that would have commanded a view across the lake to precisely where this sauna is.
In the early 70’s, things turned south for my Dad; there was a recession, he lost his job, increased his drinking, and the dream of the modernist masterpiece overlooking the lake was deflated like a balloon the cat played with. All we were left with was the model of the house my dad crafted out of mat board, with twigs as stand-ins for trees. Later, before my parents had to sell the property as a part a bankruptcy plan, I actually lived there in my tent after I finished Grad school and waited for my dreams to come to life.
I bring all of this up become of the associations of sauna with memory. So many of my clients, who are typically, like myself, aging baby boomers, tell me that they want a sauna because of the wonderful childhood memories they have of taking saunas. Perhaps their family has Finnish roots and they experienced summers in Finland, or they had a camp somewhere with a sauna. Like my experiences at Podunk, these childhood memories start to loom larger with age. Memory acts as a filter; the important things are retained and the trivial is set aside.
Landscape acts as a placeholder for memory. Living where I grew up, I constantly encounter places that stir memory. Working with my past literally out the window on this job, I was constantly reminded of my connection to this magical place in the heart of the Finger Lakes. Sauna is like a keystone in all of this.
Like so many saunas that I build, I dream for a moment; what if it was mine? But then, I hand over the sauna to the new owners so they can ponder their own dreams. In this case, the owner will be looking at the near view of the land he grew up on.
If you look “Podunk” up in the dictionary, it will tell you that it is a hypothetical or insignificant town. The folks who live there think otherwise. Podunk is actually a place name on the map a short ski south of Trumansburg, New York, where I grew up. Despite having only a smattering of residents, they will all tell you that is very real and very significant.
In the 1960’s Ozzie Heila settled there with this family on an old farmstead established by an even older Finn who first built his sauna (above) before the house in the 1930’s. It is also where I learned of all the important things in life. In the 1970’s I spent countless winter hours there at the ski center that Ozzie established, becoming a become a damn good Nordic skier and developing a life-long passion for the sport.
In the summers I explored the creek with his son, my good friend Daniel, and learned the value of immersing one’s self in nature. Daniel’s mother, Ethel, was my art teacher in middle school; she helped me become the artist I am today and we still have wonderful conversations about color theory and art composition. And at the heart of the complex of dated farm buildings was the sauna; there I learned to channel my need to experience extremes into something healthy and life affirming. We loved going from the hot to the cold.
Jumping in the creek in the dead of winter after a searing round in the sauna, we felt more alive than ever. That feeling has never died; each cold plunge I take during sauna takes me back to that creek.
Today, Daniel and his family were back in the area and we went to Podunk to visit the old homestead once again. This time we took our Finnish Blue mobile sauna and parked it next to the ramshackle old sauna, which is now defunct and awaiting a rebirth. Many things have changed but some things are the same. The trees have grown huge or even died, the old purple Lilac, with the rusty sauna bell hanging from its branches, is gone and the brush has been cleared away from the old sauna, revealing the sagging bones of the century-old structure. But the building itself is as recognizable as the last day I took a sauna there about 25 years ago. The inside is a sadder story—it turns out that squirrels like the sauna too and they have made it theirs. As if in a expression of horror at the mess, the Lämpimämpi stove I welded up for Ozzie in the 90’s sits with it’s mouth rusted wide open.
The path through the field to the creek is the same but with a detour to the left towards a new dipping hole: a bathtub in the midst of the rushing current with a strategically placed rock to help keep your butt moored. The run down to the creek had the same awkwardness … trying to run all out before you cooled off but trying to maintain stable footing the same. And the sensation! The whoops and hollers of 12-year-old boys came out of us as we braved the icy April stream.
Real or not, Podunk is the same as it will always be. What are memories but unreal fragments in our minds, ready to be stirred up by whirling waters of a cold stream, or by the hot steam of a sauna? The old next to the new will always appear old, until we make it new again and live our lives in the now, to the fullest, with no regrets, and dreams, not of memories, but of tomorrows.
New sauna and parked it next to the old sauna near the creek.
The town of Newfield, just south of where I live, is known for its rolling hills, deep gullies and rugged forest. When I used to live there I’d ramble about the woods and back roads that thread their way through sparsely populated forest. Just south of there is Spencer, known for its many Finns who settled there in the early 1900’s. Mostly these Finns came east from Michigan in search of better farmland and a life that did not include mining. You can still make out saunas behind the old farms: small wooden outbuildings with a tell-tale-chimney. Some are still in use; others are slowly falling apart, as rural structures tend to do.
At the bottom of Van Buskirk Gulf, on a stretch of seasonal road, next to the creek, is a curious arrangement of structures. One is a beautiful old stone bridge dating to 1818— the oldest in the county— that was restored several years ago. Overlooking this is an abandoned stone house; the windows shuttered with plywood and the insides littered with graffiti. Although it echoes the stonework of the bridge, county records show it was built in 1865.
Across from the house and alongside the creek sits the main object of my curiosity— an old steam sauna or banya.
Unlike the old wooden saunas, this building is built from tile block and concrete with a beautifully plastered interior. The plaster, which is over metal lathe, has a smooth eggshell finish that is only typically found in high end homes that predate the use of drywall or plaster board. The metal lathe came after the use of wood lathe. My Guess is the 1930’s-40’s. The layout has an entryway where one would undress and relax. A room to the side has a small door in its far end leading to a fire chamber below the sauna room. This is where the firewood must have been stored and the fire tended to. Beyond the dressing room, up three steps, was the bathing room. It is all plastered, including the bench, with an arched ceiling and soft curves. In the center along the interior wall, above the fire chamber, is the heater that features a large rock chamber.
The fire would pass over these rocks until they were ready to use, then, once the fire died down, the iron lid was lifted and water would be thrown on the rocks to produce steam.
This is the same as modern heat storage heaters. A side door from the dressing leads directly to the creek. Remnants of a heat exchanger tell me that hot water was also available to bathe with.
Up the creek is the remains of a large dam structure. Was this a work camp of some sort? Were Finns (or Russians) employed nearby? Was it a mill site? Perhaps it was built during the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) era of the 1930’s when many trails were built in nearby parks. I can imagine a group of workers enjoying the steam bath after a hard day’s work and plunging into the creek. I can also imagine fixing it up and returning it to use. If anyone has any answers, please share them!
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Reference: Melissa Ladenheim, The Sauna in Central New York, Dewitt Historical Society of Tompkins County. Ithaca, NY 1986.
Mobile Sauna Interior with the Lämpimämpi sauna stove, tiered benches and large window with a beautiful view of the fall foliage. Wood-fired from the outsideLämpimämpi sauna stoveStick hardware by Rob Licht
Stay posted on the latest Finnish-blue mobile sauna outings on Instagram @saunasbyrob and facebook @custom-saunas We’ll be using this one for pop-up and promotional events in the Finger Lakes region of New York State to share our saunas and promote sauna culture.
PRESS INQUIRIES: Contact Scarlet at contact@roblichtcustomsaunas.com
