The sauna at Wild Bear Lodge. (I don’t have a photo of my drunken evening with the Russians in Chechnya or my suffering at the hands of Kristin’s Dad as chronicled below.)
So why, then, are we so enamoured of the humble sauna?
After all, in it’s purest form, it is just a simple wooden box – a barrel in the case of Wild Bear Lodge – with an old-fashioned wood-burning stove to make it sizzle.
But that is only the half of it, of course. As well as the time-worn procedure – sweat, pant, cold plunge, holler, beer - there are the accompanying antics.
For those who read my recent post featuring a photo of an iced guest, and my description of the joys of our sauna perched high above our wilderness river, I promised to expand on past sauna adventures.
One of the most memorable was certainly the time in Chechnya when I sat in a dirty field banya with just a Russian spetsnaz (special forces) commander. Both of us were sozzled.
At the time I was on a charm offensive to try and persuade the large, brutish and naked man sitting six inches from me to let me stay for a few days with his unit.
No westerner – as far as I knew – had ever been embedded with spetsnaz and I had been angling for this scoop for some time. Sharing the suffering was part of my gambit to gain admission.
It was a messy evening. At one point an FSB officer, also naked, stood on the table and, turning solemnly towards me, toasted Queen Elizabeth II.