Sauna, Then the Lake: A Poem in Four Breaths

An English colleague visited me last winter and, on his first evening, asked me a question that nobody had ever asked me before: "What do you actually think about in the sauna?"

I did not have a good answer. I said "nothing," which is true but sounds rude. So I promised to try to write it down. This poem is the result. I gave it to him on a card before he flew home, and he told me later he had it pinned above his desk.

What happens in there

For readers who have not grown up with sauna, a short explanation. A Finnish sauna is a small wooden room heated by a stove with stones on top. You sit on wooden benches and throw water on the stones from a ladle, which makes a wave of hot steam called löyly. You sit as long as you like, then cool off, ideally in a lake, or in winter by rolling in the snow or climbing into a hole cut in the ice. Then you go back in. Repeat until you feel finished.

It is not a competition, though foreigners sometimes treat it as one. It is closer to what other people do in church.

The poem

One.
The ladle tips. The stones answer in a hiss
and the heat comes down over the shoulders like a coat
someone has warmed for you by the stove.
You stop talking. Everyone stops talking.

Two.
The wood smells of tar and birch and years.
Somewhere outside a car goes by, then doesn't.
Thoughts come in and sit on the bench beside you
and after a while they also get too hot and leave.

Three.
The jetty, black boards, the cold hitting your feet.
The lake takes you whole and for one second
there is no word in any language,
just the body shouting yes.

Four.
Back on the bench, skin burning and new.
Your friend from England is laughing for no reason.
You did not answer his question, but here it is:
this. This is what we think about.

Why four parts

I divided it into four because a good evening of sauna usually has about four rounds, and because each round feels different. The first is about arriving. The second is the deepest quiet. The third is the shock of the water. The fourth is a kind of happiness that is hard to explain to anyone who has not felt it.

My colleague's laugh in the last part is real. After his second plunge into the lake he came back into the sauna and laughed for almost a minute, completely unable to stop. I have seen this happen to many first-time visitors. Nobody ever knows why.

Doing nothing well

I think the reason sauna matters so much in Finland is that it is one of the few places where doing nothing is the correct activity. You cannot look at your phone, you cannot work, and talking is optional. For a quiet people, it is a kind of paradise.

If you ever get the chance to sit in a real wood-fired sauna by a lake, take it. Do not try to stay the longest. Do not try to think. Just breathe, and see what arrives and leaves on the bench beside you.