Leslie’s Blog

 

“Let’s do a Steam!”

Mike would occasionally announce the event, and then proceed to create it.

‘Doing a Steam’ would be a slow evolution over the course of a day. I didn’t ever find myself being asked to help prepare, other than to round up some towels, and a few buckets for water, and the pitchfork.  It did, though,  require a good amount of preparation.

The setting for the Steam was always near the creek.  We had scraped clean a large area for a massive bonfire.  Not a bonfire of Burning Man proportions, but a bonfire of,  “if you did that in town you’d be arrested”, proportions.  It was always a beautifully structured pyre,  square in shape,  about seven feet long on each side.  It had a ’shelf’ of slabs incorporated into its’ center that would hold the steam rocks. The sole purpose of the fire was to superheat the steam rocks to use inside the bath.

The steam rocks were ones we had gathered from the creek, and had proved trustworthy for the job over a period of time.  They were typically round, and each weighed near to five pounds.  Some of the ones we had chosen proved wrong for the temperatures, and repeated water dousings inside the steam, and had blown apart, not awfully dangerously, but frighteningly enough, nonetheless.

The steam bath, or lodge, was a frame we had constructed, and then covered with layers of heavy duty dark green tarp.  It was reminiscent of a kid’s summer tent made outdoors on the lawn, with sawhorses and blankets, with a flap for a door.

This was like a kid’s summer tent, but far more serious.

The frame and tarps enclosed an area about five feet by five feet.  We had dug a small pit, to contain the rocks, in the center of the lodge floor.  The Steam was cozy.  It was intense.  It was steamy.

The prospect of a ‘Steam’ would build in anticipation all day.  Gathering of the wood.  Construction of the pyre.  Placing of the rocks in the pyre.  Filling of water buckets for the rinse.  Placement of the towels, and water jug for taking into the lodge with us.  Waiting for sundown.

There was always some particular magic point in time in the early evening that Mike would perceive, and he would invoke, “It’s time for the Steam.”   We would head for the creek.

The fire would be lit.  There was always that moment between thinking the fire wouldn’t ‘take’, and having it become it’s own living entity. It would begin to push you back from it, shoving high up into the evening, sparking, forcing you to watch where the sparks went, and then follow the column with your eyes, back down to the source. It would mesmerize.

We would watch, and wait.  And wait.  And wait.  There would come the moment when you were almost impatient, when the pyre would collapse in on itself, the weight of the rocks falling to the center, sending a galaxy of orange stars up into the twilight.

Mike would eagerly poke the fire with the pitchfork, find the rocks, one by one, and begin to load them into the pit. The rocks would make music on the pitchfork tines as he jostled the ash from them.  I would hold the flap open as the loading took on a more hurried aspect, closing it after each rock, to help keep in the increasing heat.

Then we would get naked. 

Then we would get in the lodge.

I am a sissy.  I would try not to seem apprehensive, but I always was.  I could never breath.  The heat made taking a breath an act of extreme concentration…  slow, shallow breathing, concentration.  I would always be the first in, to sit in the back, to allow that Mike would be close to the front to ‘operate’ the door.  He knew that if  I were allowed to be in charge of operating the door, which he would rarely open to adjust the temperature down, we would find ourselves sitting naked, in a cold steam lodge.  I am a sissy.

Once I had determined that I wasn’t going to die, and had been able to take a few breaths, the real fun began.  I know Mike took a perverse delight in my suffering.  He had to be suffering the same as I, but I was just only a little bit more sissy than he, so he could hold out for mere moments longer than I, and look tough in the process.  I let him do that.

He would pour water on the rocks.

Slowly, a threadlike stream of water was poured from a height onto the rocks in the pit.  I would squirm.  I never got splattered, but I was never sure I wouldn’t be. The rocks would hiss and bluster in protest, tossing the water back and forth from one to another in a true and earnest game of hot potato.  Steam would billow from the center of the lodge floor, engulfing our heads in a hot, breathless fog.  I would hold my breath.

It wasn’t too bad if you held your breath. But that can only last just so long.

I would take tiny sips of steamed air, then little gulps, then pursed lipped inhales, then rhythmic slow breaths.  About the time I would stop feeling giddy, Mike would grin at me, and then pour more water in a threadlike stream from a height onto the rocks.

Then he would fan the steam around with the woven bamboo fan we kept in the steam for that purpose.

I was tough.  I was stubborn.  I wasn’t going to let him see me sweat.

Wait.  Yes I was.  And Yes, I did.

It rolled off me, it tickled, it made a juicy puddle under my legs. 

I would begin to anticipate the next stream of water.  I would embrace my discomfort with a mental mantra of, “Pour more water on that!  Just go ahead!  Make those rocks SCREAM!”

Then suddenly, about the time I had adjusted, it would be over.  Mike would fling the flap open, and cold air would rush in.  I would crawl out as quickly as I dared, past the hot rocks, out into the starry night.  Mike would raise a full five gallon bucket of cold water overhead, and pour it in one huge gush, so that he momentarily disappeared from view.  Then he would raise the other bucket, and let the shocking, soothing cold engulf me.  We would laugh.  It was always a shivery, relieved, wiggly laugh.

Sometimes we would refill the buckets in the creek, and dump them over each other a second time.

If you have never had a steam bath, my description of the afterglow will not be enough. If you have had a steam bath, my description of the afterglow will not be enough.

It is a most amazing feeling.  The cold water does not feel cold.  Your body is so hot from the lodge, that ice water wouldn’t have a feel to it.  It’s like cool air wafting over you.  The calm and rubbery nature of your flesh and muscles is akin to the best nights sleep you have ever experienced.  The texture of your skin insists that it isn’t your skin, but someone else’s, someone so smooth as to be unimaginable.

The embers of the fire are dark orange, and flash in waves as the breeze blows across them. You stand wrapped in a towel, sip cool water from the jar, and stare at the fire. It makes everything beyond that ember light impossible to see.

Burning Man

Guy Fawkes Night

Need-fire

banya

ice swimming

voodoolinks:   hippie…part nineteen…Shock