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.
The stove, heater, or as the Finns call it, the kiuas is the heart of the sauna. The role of the kiuas is to heat the room. But not like a wood stove, but by heating the sauna rocks, which in turn provide the heat and the löyly, or steam, that make a sauna what it is. In the savusauna, or smoke sauna, which arguably offers the most authentic experience, there is neither stove nor chimney. There is simply a pile of rocks made into a hearth. A fire is burned within (filling the room with smoke) until the rocks are hot. Once the fire is extinguished and the room cleared of smoke, the pile of rocks does its thing. Likewise, any sauna, whether it is wood fired or electric, is only ready when the rocks are hot.
When building a sauna, the choice of heater is important. But the rocks are even more important. A good heater will hold a hundred pounds, and thus, will make good löyly. A cheap heater will provide a few decorative stones, and you will feel like you are sitting in an electric oven. I have seen many well-designed saunas in my years and I have seen many poorly built saunas, as well. The worst use some variant of a cheap wood-burning stove with a dented pot of rubble or brick on top. In the best, the rocks are the focal point, and they get red-hot. Pick one up (with heat-resistant gloves, please) and drop it into a pot of water and you can make tea.
Left: Rocks shipped thousands of miles—only to explode in the sauna! Right: Cayuga Lake beach stones—can you spot the erratics?
The type of rock is critical: they should be igneous in origin, formed deep in the hot earth or in the furnace of a volcano. Think of these rocks as heat loving. Granite, grabbro, and basalt are typical examples. The Finnish and Swedish units might use grey peridotite. Then there is shape: smooth and round potato shaped rocks or jagged and broken pieces. I prefer the smoother rocks, but there is argument for using the jagged (more surface area). You can order a box of the latter from Tylö that will come all the way from Sweden. Once I opened a box to find a nice hand-written note from the fellow who packed them. Another heater company sent me a box from their supplier in Central America. Apparently, they needed a geology lesson. The polished siltstone rocks, once heated, started exploding! If you don’t want to have a box of rocks shipped half way around the world or risk getting impaled by rock shards, you can find your own.
Unfortunately, our local stone, meaning the rock that is cemented to the landscape here in Central New York, makes horrible sauna rocks. It is all sedimentary: shale, limestone and sandstone. Born in the bottom of ancient oceans, these rocks do not love fire and will complain by exploding if thrown into one. By the way, baptism by fire is a good way to test your rocks if geology eludes you—a good rock will happily glow red-hot. Thankfully, the glaciers that plowed through here brought with them piles of stone from places north that serve the sauna well. These are glacial erratics. As the glaciers retreated and melted, these stones were left behind. The resulting floods that carved our landscape left piles of these smoothed rocks (mixed in with plenty of local stone) in deltas, drumlins or moraines. I find them in the local gravel pit, which mines an ancient delta, or along the lake at my favorite park (another delta) when the water is low. Sometimes I take milk crates with me when I travel through the Adirondacks and fill them with potato-sized anorthosite rocks—which is what the moon is made of—and other pretty granites.
More important than the geology is the significance of the rocks. A Finn, even if they are using a heater with rocks packed in Sweden, will add a spirit stone or two: stones that come from home or some other special place. Stones all have distinct place markers and are borne of this earth and tied to a particular landscape. Except erratics. These have been swept from their homes in a geologic diaspora and found new homes as immigrants, oddities, and beautiful accents against the dull grey of the indigenous rocks. Even though I am made of local stone, coming from generations of Central New Yorkers, I have always related to the erratics: the outsiders, the immigrants, the atypical people. They bring us diversity, new culture and traditions like the sauna. In my next sauna, you will certainly find plenty of erractics.
Redhot Adirondack rocks / My Lämpimämpi stove / Stove wall faced with local field stone including shale.
Finishing a job is always a sweet endeavor. I usually budget in one day of fussiness: A day when I can pay attention to all of the little details, get the stove in place, and then, as a last step, give the sauna a test run. This is when I get to see how my efforts have paid off and take note of how the sauna actually fires. Is it hot enough? Is it light and airy and does it have that right sauna feng shui? Does it reach a good temperature and would Ozzie—the Finn who started me on my sauna-building path—approve?
The job I just finished is a modest affair: bare bones, applying that Finnish sort of pragmatism. I converted a kit-built garden shed, the type you’ll find lined-up on the edge of a big-box home store parking lot, into a simple sauna with no dressing room. I liked the challenge of working within a modest budget, and I liked the folks: down-to-earth, modern-day Helen and Scott Nearing types. I had to remind myself that a sauna does not have to be a luxury item, affordable only by those in the higher income brackets. A sauna should be as essential and ubiquitous as indoor plumbing.
I lined the inside with knotty pine—a low budget alternative to cedar. Sitting on the top bench, I noted that the smell of pine reminds me of my forays into woods here in the east. It is a familiar smell, close to my heart, unlike the rarefied smell of cedar. Aside from the knots, which will forever bleed sap that will inevitably find it’s way into someone’s hair, it is a fine wood to use. It is not as stable as cedar, but the inevitable cracks will open the sauna up and let it breathe. We always said that Ozzie’s old sauna at Podunk, with its gappy, knotty-pine walls and sagging ceiling, felt better than any other.
MyLämpimämpi stove fired fast and hot. The rocks quickly reached good löyly temperature and the first splash of water had me moaning in ecstasy. At no point did I feel that claustrophobic locker-room-sauna feeling of not being able to breathe. The dual windows filled the space with light. The benches will hold the couple, their kids and several neighbors. In term of essentials, it is a perfect sauna. Nothing more is needed—no fancy tile or trim work, no designer dressing room. It works, plain and simple, and it works well. It was the best sweat I’d had in a while, and a good sweat is almost payment enough.
Recently, I was visiting my good friend Daniel, in Eugene, OR, and had the fortune of being able to help him put the final touches on the sauna he has been building in the backyard of his urban utopia. He moved there seventeen years ago from Ithaca, leaving behind the sauna on the family homestead in Podunk, just outside of Ithaca (yes, that really is the name of the hamlet). That little weathered building was where I was indoctrinated in the way of the sauna; it was the catalyst behind my sauna building career. As was typical with the Finns, Willie Uitti (the property’s first chicken farmer owner) built the sauna at Podunk was built first and it served as rudimentary shelter while the house was being built. Daniel has had to dream for the past seventeen years before he was able to build his sauna.
We worked together for a day and a half installing the heater, hanging the door, and getting it ready. Needless to say, the first firing of the new sauna was nothing short of perfect. It reached a good temperature, it made good löyly, the reclaimed cedar boards gave off a rich odor, and most importantly, it reached down to the pit of our sauna loving souls and transported us back to that cherished time and place on the banks of Taughannock Creek.
To the Finns, Sauna is not just a building or the simple act of sitting in a hot room, it is a quotidian ritual, a centuries old tradition, and a centering of one’s soul. The beautifully funky little shed behind Daniel’s house isn’t just a man shack, it is his identity. My role in helping was more midwife than carpenter, the honor of sharing the first sauna more like best man.
So it goes in the sauna building business, I don’t just make little buildings for people, I help them hold onto their identity, their heritage, and their dreams. It’s an honor and a privilege—and always a joy to share that special excitement of the first heating.
Podunk aficionados will recognize this bell that used to hang by the old sauna. Traditionally, the bell was used to alert bathers that a round was over or that the sauna was hot or that someone was approaching from the outside world.
The electric heater, although a far cry from wood, can still give off a nice glow. If installed correctly, it will provide plenty of heat and good löyly.
The inside as it should be: simple and dimly lit. The heat should be felt and almost seen as a shimmering veil that falls over the stress of daily life. Detailing here is clean and rustic, newly built but as old as the tradition of sauna.
My latest project came about because of the enthusiastic insistence of the client, who, with typical Finnish ingenuity, decided that her tiny “garden shed” needed to become a sweet little sauna. Typically, for the electric saunas I build, I carve out space in the recesses of a dark basement or some other unused corner of the house. This space had its own bright little shell for me to work with, perfectly placed a few paces from the kitchen door. The exterior had charm, so I left that alone except for the new galvanized metal roof, which mirrors its surroundings. It is clandestinely tucked into the yard, so that unbeknownst to the neighbors, there is a whole world of warmth inside.
It immediately reminded me of a Tardis. For those of you not up on Dr. Who, of the popular British TV series, a Tardis is a time machine in the form of a phone booth. And Tardis is an acronym for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. When the door is opened, an enormous interior is revealed. My challenge was to make this 64 sq. ft. shed completely functional as a sauna and feel larger than it is. So far it has surpassed my expectations. It feels roomy, airy, and comfortable for two or three people with a heat that burns deep and a löyly that lingers just long enough. I even fit in a foyer/disrobing area. Stepping out of it in a cloud of steam, it is hard to reconcile the size of the outside with the comfort of the interior.
Like the Tardis, the sauna is a time machine. Once inside, the heat takes you to another dimension as minutes turn to hours and worries melt away like the face on a Dali watch. Sometimes, I want to thank my clients more than they thank me, for the inspiration to create something so perfect and for taking me out of my world and into theirs.
