Bog Myrtle & Peat

The match flared into a luxury of curled bark, and crackling began soon afterwards. I’m used to lighting fires which call for long and gentle coaxing, but this stove was hungry to begin. Soon there were flames which pulled at the logs I’d laid, and I started to worry the sauna would begin without me. So I pulled off my clothes and waited in a state of grave excitement. 

I had been told that I could use this sauna, but the invitation assumed that I would know how it worked. Then everybody had gone out for the day, and I was left with the impression that it’s simply a hot box – how hard could it be? After an uncertain start, the thermometer on the wall began to rise up from thirty degrees. My glasses fogged, and I started to feel more confident that I was having a sauna. But then I doubted myself; the thermometer had the capacity to rise all the way up to one hundred and twenty degrees. I was stuck at forty three.

So I looked for ways to ramp up the heat. I fiddled with vents and adjusted the logs in the burner. By increasing the airflow to the fire, I noticed a sharp swell of heat. The stones began to glow, so I spooned some water upon them, and I was pleased to find their gentle hiss was beginning to grow roots. Steam bloomed around me, and the thermometer’s needle crept upwards. Emboldened, I did more. 

I noticed a real change when the thermometer struck sixty degrees, and the effect was heightened thereafter. I took off my shorts and sat naked on the wooden slats, feeling sweat begin to slicken on my back. My forearms bulged and streams of moisture broke down the central line of my chest. This body of mine is strangely unexplored. It simply follows me around, and I only pay attention to my limbs when they fail me in matters of strength or endurance. So it was curious to watch myself working through these external changes – I was glossy and I shone in the half-darkness; I had become aware of my legs and the slope of my belly; the prospect of myself engaged in something newly physical. Living in strictures and buttoned-up self-denial, it’s easy to misread the smallest physicality for something erotic – but there was little of lust in the smell of sweating pine. I had simply found myself in a new and beastly engagement with the world. 

At eighty degrees, I was soaked with sweat and my breath had begun to flutter. I felt more confident that I was having a sauna, but was it possible that I had only just begun. I knew that this experience is properly followed by a plunging immersion in water; that there were lakes outside, and the prospect of a swim in ice which had only recently thawed. But having no lead to follow, it was hard to know when I was done. The sweat had become a new experience of its own – there was no more water to pour on the stones and the fire raged in its box. I thought of leaving, then wondered if I had done enough to experience the full effect. It had taken half an hour to reach the requisite heat, and I was partly appalled by the extravagance of wasting that work by leaving. Get a decent fire going at home and you’re honour-bound to sit beside it. In truth, the entire process struck me as a strange and undeserving treat. In the south of Scotland, we have a low baseline for gratification. We know what we need to survive, and anything more than this is placed on a sliding scale of extravagance. You can live without saunas, so how can you square this indulgence of nudity and excess?

But after I had plunged into the lake, the subsequent calm was devastating. I tried to access memories of troubles past and ongoing, but I couldn’t put my hands upon them. Standing up to my knees in the black, erasing water, I pressed a towel to my face and blinded myself. A quarter of a mile away, a greenshank rose up from the moss and sang in long, mechanical phrases to the lake. Swans moaned, but nothing came near me.