I love camping solar showers and
watertank farm showers and jumping in rivers. I love exfoliating with
beach sand and painting myself with mud. I love homemade salt scrubs
and candlelit tubs and chromotherapy and fragrant, herb-infused
water. And yes, if it's all I've got, I also love rickety prefab
shower cabinets and thumpy fiberglass tubs.
And I love bathhouses. All-wood and
tatami, onsen-inspired ones. Romanesque marble-and-echo ones. Mosaic
bellystone ones. YMCA gymnasium ones. Hippies-on-the-beach ones.
Forest retreat picture-window ones. Strip-mall
imported-salt-chunk-and-plastic-seahorse ones. Sanitarium scrub-down
ones. I am radically pro-bathhouse. I want more in the world.
I want you to know this, so you know
where I'm coming from, when I talk about what I've been doing. I read
through guidebooks and travel forums, and people are reviewing
bathhouses like the opening of a new fast-food chain. I've been to
bathhouses that weren't my style, and bathhouses that didn't
function, but I don't believe in bad bathhouses. I'm not looking for
perfect. I'm not looking for fancy. I'm not even looking for
effortless. I don't mind a bathhouse that takes me an hour to find,
that's older than I am, whose traditions I have to learn, whose
cleaning crews aren't compulsive. I've got reams of theories about
bathing and enjoying life, about health and happiness and the right
to both. I want bathhouses that make people happy. I'm looking for
living, vital bathhouses that are loved by their patrons, cared for
by their owners, and are improving people's lives. I believe in
bathhouses that work. I believe in lots and lots of bathing
experiences.
And the bathing experience we're
discussing right now is saunas. Because this is Scandinavia, full-on
Finland, where they made up the word Sauna. So, our language is sweat
and stove and stone and wood and fire and steam. For the rest of the
chapter, we are all sizzle and bench and endorphin rushes and this
beautiful idea of lรถyly
(which is a word I can't pronounce, and neither can you, but I like
to read it, and to hear Finnish people describe it as near-sentient
steam, the soul of the sauna.)
Oh, and a word about temperature. I'm
using Celsius as my sauna-heat measure, because it underscores for me
the whole complete and unique tactile environment in the stove room.
(I can't hear “110 degrees Fahrenheit” without thinking of that
vacation in Texas, or my childhood summer egg-experiments. Too prone
to hyperbole. Even (hitherto) imaginary temperatures like 180.)
Celsius gives sauna heat it's own authority. So, let's just remember
that 100 degrees boils water, yes? And 40 is a dangerously hot summer day.
