Lately, I have been diligent about doing morning stretches on the floor, even when I travel. Like when I’m stuck in a dentist’s chair, this gives me plenty of time to contemplate things time while I stare at the ceiling. Where there is tongue and groove wood paneling, I often see handprints of the builders.
In a recent cabin we stayed in, it felt like hiking out West and seeing ten-thousand year old handprints randomly on rocks, like they were done yesterday. It is a startling and mysterious experience that makes you question things like the significance of time or how unimportant each of us is in the greater scheme of things. The basic instinct of leaving your mark connects humans across time.
There is also a phenomena often attributed to spirits, where marks appear magically on walls. Once I had a newly renovated apartment where, after a year, maniacal rantings suddenly appeared on the walls. But, I knew it was not the devil at play but the work of a unwell squatter in the previously abandoned building using a Sharpie to pen his thoughts. I learned, from my days as a house painter, that Sharpie marks can appear through layers of paint well after the job is done; that they need layers of sealer to be suppressed. Like those Sharpie marks, buried under layers of paint, greasy handprints by a worker on your sauna building crew can leave invisible marks on your cedar, only to be cooked out by the heat of repeated saunas.
One of the things I’ll tell if you ever have a chance to help me install tongue and groove cedar, pine or other wood, is: wash your hands!
Oils in your skin (or residue from that submarine sandwich you had for lunch) will leave marks: maybe invisible today, but one day they will appear. And if you cut yourself, don’t be a blood-dripping warrior; put a bandage on it! Blood stains will appear like stigmata after a few sauna sessions. And boot prints deserve a special place on my list: I once had a nice sauna, built with help from friends, but one of them thought they could step on the expensive pile of cedar, rather than walk around it; a Vibram lug-sole print was cooked right into the middle of the ceiling.
Maybe, like the cave painters at Lascaux, carpenters have this unconscious urge to leave their unique mark, which, as an artist, I understand. I like to think we are leaving our mark, but with our fine craftsmanship and not our handprints.
