Blowing Hot and Cold: Part two

The next instalment of my work in progress

This is the latest instalment from my work in progress, Blowing Hot and Cold (working title!) You can find the first instalment from last week here.

In late September I’m planning on making these instalments paid-for posts. You can subscribe for just £3.50 a month or £35 a year. As well as these posts you’ll also get my weekly missives about my interactions with the outdoors and various other memoir-related bits. The link below will do the trick. And please let me know what you think in the comments. OK, here goes.

Imbued with an inner fortitude that had lain dormant since my days of regular dipping, Finland gifted me a new obsession. As the week wore on, I rode the train north past the country’s glittering lakes, thousands of vast, sparkling expanses alongside which simple summer houses stood, primed and ready for their owners to arrive and while away the longest days of the year next to the water, alternating between the cooling water and the searing temperatures of their own, rudimentary saunas.

Near the small, riverside city of Jyvaskyla I joined a group of sauna enthusiasts at Savutuvan Apaja, a lakeside restaurant that had given itself over to the power of nature’s healing abilities. A series of small, wood-fired saunas stood by the water, where jetties reached long into Lake Paijanne. The heat inside them was outrageous, driven to new heights by the fact there were a dozen of us sitting thigh to thigh as we began a cleansing ritual with a local sauna master dressed in traditional clothing, a long skirt to her ankles and a bonnet strapped around her head.

I watched as she recounted stories of local spirits, brought into the space through the loyly, the steam which rises from the stove as water is ladled into its depths. Each time one was invoked she poured on some more. Faces were burnished red in the low light, legs turned slippery as steam and sweat mingled. She chanted sweet songs as one by one we were hit, stroked and whipped with a whisk made from just foraged branches from the surrounding forest. The scent of eucalyptus filled the air.

When my turn arrived I was on the edge of expiring. I closed my eyes as ordered and dipped my head as if in prayer. A brief flash of childhood came before me, kneeling in the pews as the local priest intoned warnings about original sin. Here though, everything was peaceful, a deep sense of being at one with nature filling the sauna.

Incantations in Finnish filled the air as the leaves rustled over my back and tickled across my shoulders. Soon there was the gentle beating I had come to expect, bringing me right into the present. The whisk falls repeatedly over my head, my ears and my neck. I am at one with the forest from which these branches have come from. I have dissolved and become my unconscious self, here, there and everywhere. It is a feeling so powerful that it can only ever be fleeting. It is gone as fast as it comes and cannot be chased. When the whisking stops, I stand, give a prayer sign of thanks and force my way out of the heat. My body is a mess of wet leaves, my skin pink.

The lake was calling, as were my newfound sauna friends, who were treading water beyond the jetty. I opted for an ungainly jump, a mess of whirling arms and legs splattering into the lake, which washed away the leaves and gave me a whole different sense of embodiment.

Scale is something which helps a great outdoor swim stand out from a good one. Here, the clean lake water had a life giving quality, but more than that the vastness of the space allowed for a greater sense of wonder. It is this that keeps me coming back for more, the cold of the water too helping to create a nowness that cannot be replicated when powering out lengths in an indoor pool. It is what eases my anxiety, as much as the blast of iciness from the water itself that lowers inflammation in the body. When you’re small like this, it makes it easier to feel part of a greater whole.

Pair that idea with the power of the sauna and you have something overwhelming, life-changing. I kept returning to the darkness of the log cabins at Savutuvan Apaja. I couldn’t really stop. My sessions were not lengthy, the temperature regularly touching 90ºC, but the urge for such clarity and purification are powerful and addictive, especially to someone raised Catholic who struggles to shake off the shackles of original sin.

When I finally allowed myself the time and space to stop, to take it all in, it was closing in on 10pm. The low light slid through the trees and cast long shadows from those of us still wandering outside, many in a daze. A bus had been laid on to take us back to the city. As I clambered aboard I struggled to get out much more than a brief hello to those sitting close by: sauna fiends and old swimming pals from back home, all of whom too seemed to be lost in a deep reverie. That night I slept deeply and dreamt of water, the way it hissed off of hot stones, the scent of burning wood and the sound of drying leaves crackling together as they hit my skin. I woke up and found I had lost the ability to rush, to move hastily. Everything felt purposeful, slow and steady. This was how I wanted my life to feel. Not for this to be just a fleeting state, but one that was recurring, a state of grace that was within easy reach. Something that could allow me to be more present for my family, kinder to my body and give me a connection to the Earth that I can find through swimming but often requires hours of reheating and a sometimes extreme approach which I’ve fallen out of love with.

I left Jyvaskyla the following morning, riding three hours back to Helsinki for a flight back to the UK. I never lost that feeling as the days wore on afterwards. That sense that there was something deeper to this, something so powerful that I needed to understand it to learn more about it, explore it in a meaningful way. And as I slid back into my daily routine, I came to see that this abiding culture had the power to bring succour and meaning to life, a balance that so many of us, especially those of us prone to rumination, anxiety and depression, crave so badly.