It’s minus 16 degrees in our British Columbia valley as I write these lines.
And so here, at my temporary perch in Rochester, in the fair English county of Kent, where the temperature is merely hovering around freezing, I should count my blessings.
But part of me can’t help wishing I was back in the Canadians wilds, frost stinging my face, wind howling around my ears, nose red and painful.
If I could magically teleport myself across the Atlantic the very first thing I would do would be to fire up the sauna.
Within a few minutes woodsmoke would be spooling across the frigid yard and by late afternoon, with moderate tending of the small wood fire that is the engine of the beast, its innards would be approaching that magic 90 degrees celsius.
Then it would be time to strip off, plonk my bum down on a searing bench, hunch in the heat until my skin turns the colour of cooked crab and my breathing becomes laboured, and then throw myself into the freezing snow and howl and holler and curse.
What joy!
My history with saunas dates back to my childhood.
My father, a Hungarian refugee who fought in the 1956 anti-Soviet uprising and then fled westwards when Moscow’s tanks rolled in, had a London office and a helter-skelter career as a self-made businessman.
When times were good they were very good. And when they were bad they were awful.
During our most sustained wave of prosperity – I wasn’t yet in my teens - we lived in a large house in the English countryside. My Mum drove a long-nosed English sports car, my Dad has racehorses, and the house had a small gym, a sun bed and, yes, a sauna.
I remember wondering as a child why anyone would want to subject themselves to such horrendous heat. Of all the luxuries money could buy, why that?
In due course the good times evaporated.
My Dad returned to Hungary and moved into a converted livestock stall on the barren eastern plains. The building had no power or running water and was more than modest but he lived there quite happily until he died some 30 years later.
My Mum had a second flowering. She took up with a jailbird, became a hypnotherapist, and eventually moved back to her native Wales. She still lives in a quiet village the name of which translates as ‘the bridge of the ford of the cross’.
As for me, at seventeen, I was out of the house and scrabbling around for a living.
Eventually I found a tailwind and, after a decade on the frontlines working for a British daily newspaper as a correspondent, I was posted to Moscow to head up the small bureau there.
And it was in that freezing city of 15-odd million that I morphed from sauna-sceptic to full-on devotee.
Every Saturday night, with a handful of chosen mates, I would head off to one of the grand urban bathhouses and indulge.
And, in time, I became a sauna bore. I would hold forth on rates of temperature rise and fall, the benefits and drawbacks of various degrees of humidity, and the perfect composition of culinary accompaniment.
(Beer and salted pickles. Vodka and shashlik kebabs. Jellied pork with a soaking of white vinegar. We argued endlessly over the perfect combinations.)
Later I met Kristin, a true daughter of Estonia, who was to become my wife. And that took me even further down the sauna rabbit-hole.
If there is one nation (other than the Finns) that turns a painful breathless sit in a small dark room into a national obsession, it is the Estonians.
And, soon - though I was born a Brit in a country that is mostly tepid and damp and has no need for or cultural history of saunas - I became one of those foreigners that is more zealous than the locals.
With my regular outings to the sauna came sauna adventures.
There was the time I sat naked with a Russian special forces commander in a home-made banya in Chechnya and was bitten by a rat.
Or the trip to the Russian far east where the temperature dropped to minus 50 degrees and, well-lubricated, I jumped in the snow only to roll in my own urine.
Perhaps the most memorable was the (literal) roasting I got from Kristin’s Dad in the family hot box when I told him I wanted to take his much-loved daughter to live in Canada.
(I will soon have a post for paid subscribers with the best, and worst, of my sauna adventures.)
When Kristin and I arrived in the Canadian wilds, then, building our own sauna was high on our list of priorities. But somehow we just kept having to postpone. There were years of financial woes when we simply couldn’t afford the expense.
Then when I did finally make a few quid – I spent nine months in southern Afghanistan as a British government political officer - I instead bought a home-made bush plane, which I wrapped around an airport fencepost on my first take-off attempt.
Finally, many years later, the time for the sauna finally arrived. I called up two carpenter friends and we sketched out a plan. In due course they arrived with a trailer-load of wood, two enormous metal beams, and several tonnes of concrete mix.
Ours was not just to be a common-or-garden sauna, but, in my head, a thing of beauty suspended on a cantilevered platform over our wilderness river. And indeed, more thanks to the fine workmanship than the showy concept, that is what it became.
Since its christening, the sauna has attracted ancillary structures around it. There is a hot tub which fits four or even six, and a cold plunge. There is a small drinks table, a stack of firewood, and a plethora of armchairs.
Of course, sauna culture is not for everyone. Many of our guests prefer to sip a glass of wine in the comfort of the lodge as one of our guides leads an after-dinner discussion on aspects of ursine behaviour, rainforest ecology or other wilderness lore.
But for those who have the bug, and I obviously count myself among them, the sauna ritual is about the best therapy to be had.
And when you are finally done you can collapse into an armchair and take in a thousand square miles of wilderness to the north, the snowy peaks of the Selkirk Mountains to the south, and the rush of the river below.
At such times everything seems right with the world.
This post is for paid and free subscribers. Please offer comments, corrections and thoughts.
NEWS & LINKS
We are filling up fast for the spring bear-viewing holidays we offer in May. Parts of our October grizzly-viewing season are also beginning to book up. But we do still have some space.
If you fancy something different, come for a a three-night holiday in September that offers a little of everything: sub-alpine hiking with a chance to watch mountain grizzlies, walks in old-growth rainforests, and a great river rafting trip. You can check out our website or drop me a line on julius@wildbearlodge.ca
Thank to Pat Steffes for the photo of him freezing in our cold plunge and the wonderful photos of his time at the lodge he has given us to use.
A Finn here! 🇫🇮 😎👋 Nice sauna descriptions here.
However, +90C is too hot in general,+ 80C being the classical “sweet spot”. A different story is, of course, the older tradition of our smoke sauna, in which the temperature can first climb so high that it stings way too much before settling to a very comfortable and “soft”, tending heat. The most health benefits you can get if you keep the sauna around the +80C.
In a lifetime of travel our visit to Grizzly Bear ranch was a standout. So good to read your stories and see that life is good for you. Here's to a successful season. Best Jenny Pynt