How many times has this happened to you? Your mind is stuck on a specific thought pattern and then “boom,” up pops a made-to-order complementary object that tops off your thought as neatly as a cherry tops off a sundae. That happened to me yesterday. I was thinking of fishing in Finland with a friend, and boom, the cherry appeared.

  I was clearing away outdated stuff from my office shelves, all the time reminiscing about that distant fishing adventure I’d had in Finland, and wondering whether the story was worthy of telling in a post. As my thoughts rolled on, I came across a stack of neglected CDs and DVDs. One of them had “For Ken” written on it.

  I had no idea what that DVD might contain, but I was curious, so I stuck it into my computer and up popped a movie on the screen, one beginning with me in a rowboat just launched. There it was: the perfect cherry atop my sundae, a documentation of the very adventure I had been thinking about!

  My friend, Martti, had recorded parts of that adventure with his home movie camera, something I’d forgotten, for this happened decades ago. He later transferred the resultant film to a DVD and shipped a copy across the ocean to me. I’d watched it at the time, and lost track of it until yesterday.

  A bit of background. We were at his summer cottage, the day after we had fired up his smoke sauna (see that story here). The movie records part of our boating adventure on Lake Suvasvesi (see here) as we went to check on the fishing nets we had set out the night before.

  I took a few screen shots of the action in the movie. Here’s the first, grainy as it is.

What you can’t tell from the above view is how foggy it was. We probably couldn’t see more than 100 feet in any direction. I remember thinking it would be a long shot to even find our nets in that murky mist on a lake covering 90 square miles. We had rowed for a considerable time on the preceding night to reach the site where Martti chose to set the nets.

  Because of the long time lapse since this occurred, details are fuzzy, but I still remember seeing nothing but water, waves, and fog as Martti rowed us steadily and rhythmically along the lake. After what seemed to be a long time, and with my doubts of success rising even higher, I happened to spot the floats marking the location of our fishing nets. They were bobbing just ahead, directly in our path. Martti had found our needle in the haystack.

  We pulled the nets aboard and discovered a nice number of small fish had entangled themselves in our web, fish that later would make a fine dinner. Martti asked if I’d like to row us back. Sure thing! So I grabbed the oars and rowed, with Martti navigating. I rowed, and rowed, and rowed some more, seeing nothing but water and fog, wondering if Martti could actually find the way back.

  Wind blew into action and complicated things. Waves kicked up. Our boat joined the fray, bouncing from stem to stern, rocking with the punch of a bucking bronc. I rowed on, my muscles beginning to complain, my enthusiasm waning. Pride kept me going. All this time Martti sat calmly in the stern, navigating us through the waves, occasionally filming me pulling on the oars.

  I kept rowing, my energy draining. I began to wonder if I might row until the end of my days. Just as my fuel gauge bumped against zero, Martti told me to look over my shoulder. I glanced around and saw an amazing sight. Right there, precisely in the direction we were headed, was his summer cottage rising above the shoreline. Never, I thought, had a scene been more welcome. How, I wondered, how he guided me so accurately?

  I asked him about that later. He modestly replied that he had factored in the wind, the direction of the nets from his summer cottage, the waves, and maybe another variable that I don’t recall, but to me it was a feat of pure magic.

Correction

  In my last post (See it here), I wrote of demonstrating my proficiency at spear fishing and claimed I had no training whatsoever. This was misleading. Having now digested the above mentioned video, I remember my spear fishing adventure in clearer detail. It went like this.

  One night Martti and I boated along the lake’s shoreline with me in the bow, the homemade spear in my hand, and Martti oaring us slowly and silently forward, following a track that kept us in water roughly three to six feet deep. A lantern suspended at my side cast its glow down through the clear water to the bottom, so fish below were easily seen. I had the simple task of spotting a fish and aiming my spear to snag it. It worked quite well. I think I hit more than I missed. In fact, my first attempt caught a nice-sized pike, one that, as I think Martti put it, had been pretty much filleted before I brought him aboard. He was a tasty rascal too.

My friends, Martti and Kaarina, as is common for many Finnish families, own a summer cottage on a lake shore. When I first visited their site a few decades ago, the only building standing was a rough-hewn log cabin, its left side walled off and made into an authentic smoke sauna, the type most prized by Finns (read it here), and a type becoming increasingly rare. One weekend Martti drove me to his cottage and eased me into the complicated joys of heating up, and sweltering in, his smoke sauna.

Regular readers of this blog may recall that Martti, the Finnish professor and my collaborator from time to time, launched us onto other noteworthy trips. He and I once traveled by bus to Leningrad, where we sampled Russian culture and absorbed the smothering effects of Communistic rule (read it here, and here). On another occasion, Martti drove us to Lapland where we rounded up reindeer in the middle of a night ablaze with light from a sun refusing to go away (read it here).

Idyllic setting

Martti’s summer cabin stood in an idyllic setting, a few yards from the shore of huge Lake Suvasvesi (a body of crystal clear water covering 90 square miles). Extending back from the shore was a stately forest of tall trees. Martti, Kaarina, and their son Juhana, had constructed the entire cabin from old discarded logs. I considered it to be a jewel, especially the sauna side of it that contained an ample stone fire pit with wooden benches in front of it.

It started to rain lightly as I inspected the place. Martti, well prepared as always, pulled out rain gear and handed me a bright yellow outfit. At that moment, nature emerged at its finest. Imagine the whisper of tiny falling drops blending with hushed bird talk and rhythmic waves lapping along the shore. I stood enthralled, I think with my mouth open, but Martti prodded me into action.

Work required

Firing up a smoke sauna, I quickly learned, requires real work, and a ton of patience. We began the chore by gathering kindling wood, a pleasant task, before getting more physical and swinging axes to split logs, many, many logs, mostly birch as I recall. We whacked away for maybe half an hour, time enough to build up a good pile of fuel.

Next we layered the kindling and a generous amount split wood into the fire pit and Martti set a match to it. Soon flames leaped, heat became intense, we closed the small entrance, and smoke poured out a gap in a wall near the roof (there was no chimney). I thought for a time that the entire structure might begin to flame. (Smoke saunas, I later learned, have been known to burn down.).

By that time I was ready to sample the sauna, but Martti said more time was needed. The fire burned on, we added more fuel, the stones got hotter, as did the walls. Still it wasn’t ready according to Martti’s practiced eye. In fact, it would take a few more hours of refueling and heating. By then the walls themselves were burning hot to the touch, and they, and everything else inside the sauna, were covered with a thin layer of soot.

After our last refueling, Martti indicated it was time to allow the fire to burn down and the smoke to clear. To commemorate that moment, we set up a tripod and took a photo.

While waiting for the sauna to clear of smoke, Martti pulled from a cooler two bottles of number IV beers, the strongest of Finnish brews. We popped off the caps and leisurely drank the chilled liquid as the sauna readied itself for us. The rain stopped. Our surrounding world was quiet and at peace. Life had never been better.

Finally the moment came. Feeling mellow and a bit tired from our hours of effort, not to mention the beer, I was keen for the experience. We disrobed and took in towels to sit on, along with rags to wipe soot from the bench. The heat was INTENSE, and it soon got hotter as Martti ladled water from a pail onto hot rocks and released a blast of steam that came at us like a blowtorch. The steam caught in my throat, a sensation of heat unlike any I had felt before. Sweat was dripping. I felt an urge to run for the door. But in its own way, the heat became relaxing.

Fuzzy details

Memory fails me here. Certain details are fuzzy. I cannot remember where the hot rocks were, the ones Martti ladled water on to increase the sauna’s heat, but a hazy, unreliable image suggests they were in a metal container on the floor. Nor do I remember how long each of our sessions in the smoke sauna lasted, or what we did during each break, our first one coming after about 10 minutes inside.

But I do see snatches of our gaps as we cooled between bouts with the sauna’s heat. In at least one interval (actually, I think it was two), we sat outside where the above photo had been taken and downed another number IV, for extra fortitude you might say. And of course, we needed to lower our body temperatures after we had been properly baked. I remember that specific scene extremely well.

Cold lake

Before our sauna was ready, Martti had stuck a thermometer into the clear water of Lake Suvasvesi and showed me the water temperature was 5^° Celsius (41^° Fahrenheit), a liquid refuge promising to be a chilling change from the sauna’s blast of its air heated to at least 85^° Celsius (185^° Fahrenheit), and probably more.

After we came out of the sauna for the last time, Martti tramped off to the lake shore, me following. I watched him move bravely into the icy water. He was up to mid-waist and splashing water on his shoulders when my foot first touched the water. I don’t know what it was, maybe my muscles being cooked to medium rare, or the number IV beers, or maybe just the thrill of adventure, but something caused me to rush into the water in one swoosh and splash past Martti, free-styling my way to almost the end of his pier before stopping and treading water as I caught my breath. Was I cold? Yes. But it didn’t matter. I felt great!

Martti seemed to approve of my lengthy dip. We waded out, grabbed towels, dried off, and enjoyed another beer while sitting naked on the ledge outside of the cooling sauna, each of us properly mellowed to the extreme, each of us filled with joy.

It began in Illinois decades ago, four young men having no idea they were forming a lifelong friendship. They were just having fun. “Friendship does not arise out of necessity, but out of pleasure,” wrote one of my favorite contemporary writers, Joseph Epstein, in Friendship: An Exposé (Link), a delightful discourse on the subject.

The four fellows lived in the same barracks while attending weather observer school at the now-closed Chanute Air Force base. When not expending their youthful vigor on identifying multiple forms of cumulus and stratus clouds, or analyzing the adiabatic lapse rate, they found time to banter with each other, to sketch in their varied backgrounds.

John grew up in Toledo, Ohio, and had studied at the University of Texas. Vic came from Washington, a graduate of the University of Puget Sound. Chuck, from Cicero, Illinois, enlisted after high school, and I, the fourth guy of the group, had completed an aimless year of college in South Dakota and had never ventured beyond Dakota borders until my enlistment (Link).

I can’t define what pulled us together, I doubt any of us really knew. Probably it was simply because we liked each other, and our liking led to common adventures. One unforgettable evening we chug-a-lugged uncounted steins of frothy beer at the airmen’s club and then decided to play a rousing game of football in the snow, rushing and tackling until exhausted, our fatigues soaked and splotched with white.

Fine Transportation

John owned a Studebaker and soon traded it in for a late-model Cadillac, a nifty trophy that shuttled us through the region in style. We zoomed up to Chicago a few times, once to visit Vic’s relatives. Two families of his uncles, or maybe cousins, I don’t remember which, lived in the Windy City, one set friendly to Vic’s family, the other not, so his target was clear. As we approached Chuck’s home town, he passed along neighborhood tidbits about Cicero’s own Al Capone.

Vic’s kin greeted us warmly and immediately led us to the basement where a table stretched almost wall to wall, its top heavy with gigantic platters of food. A tub of spaghetti and huge bottles of red wine covered a smaller table along the left wall, a family gathering being in full swing. As we were introduced, one specific comment changed Vic’s smile to an embarrassed pucker. “Wrong family,” he whispered to me. Despite this blunder, no grudges flared. We four stuffed ourselves with course after course, and hours later left amid a burst of happy farewells, the family rift repaired, at least temporarily.

Back in the barracks we formed our own special club, driving to the nearby town of Rantoul to gather whiskey, cheeses, crackers, and other snacks and storing them in our lockers. I, the least worldly of our quartet, volunteered during our first shopping to “find the Velveeta” and was suitably ribbed for my naiveté. Evenings we hunkered down in our small private circle to relish our simple provisions, to express opinions, to share confidences, to appreciate each other, to ease our way into friendship.

Exploring

With our passes permitting us to leave the airbase during our generous free time, we hit the road often, usually aiming southward to destinations such as Springfield, or Urbana‑Champaign, where we once watched the Fighting Illini battle a forgotten Big 10 opponent during a heavy snow storm, the opposite side of the stadium, and the far goal post blotted from our view by the curtain of wet flakes.

Earlier, as we sped to that game, John ran onto a stretch of iced highway and quickly discovered his Cadillac had become uncooperative. He twisted his steering wheel with no effect, and jammed the brake pedal without slowing his proud possession, but rather sending it into a smooth and languid 360 degree spin as we glided toward a huge post lurking ahead on the right shoulder of the highway. With the post only yards away, the Cadillac fortunately competed its full rotation and veered a foot or two to the right of that bulky obstruction before skidding harmlessly into the ditch and easing to a stop.

“Wow,” I said, shaken in the back seat, “sure lucky we missed that post.” “What do you mean lucky?” John said, his features flushed as he turned back to face me. “I wasn’t fixin’ to hit that post!”

Such moments sealed our friendship. We all sensed, I think, our strengthening bond, so much so that by the end of our a couple of months together, as graduation from weather observer approached, we documented our ties by visiting a professional photographer. Soon afterward, destined for separate assignments in Germany and Alaska, we shook hands and parted, each with a precious photograph in duffel, and vowed to keep in touch with each other.

Vic, top; John, bottom; Chuck, left; Ken, right

After our parting, communication between us, and one-on-one meetings, were sadly rare. Chuck and John did meet in San Francisco months after our goodbyes and sailed together to Alaska where they parted when assigned to separate bases. Vic and Ken, while stationed in different bases in Germany, met and traveled to Holland on brief furlough. Some years later Ken and John met in Houston. There were scattered others, but for the most part our separation was complete. Still the pilot light of friendship remained brightly lit. Decades later, through threads of complicated magic, we four learned of an Air Weather Association (Link) reunion in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Thus communication was reestablished. Plans were made. We would meet in Cocoa Beach!

Reunion

As the day approached, I wondered how it would go. I should have known the answer. There were no hesitations, no distances, just an instantaneous familiarity, a comfortable closeness so genuine that it felt as though we never had been separated at all. In that short week we brought our lives up to date, filled in gaps, once again linked together as tightly as we ever had been. And of course we made another keepsake by finding a Sears photographer open on a Sunday afternoon, knowing the finished product  soon would be paired with our earlier version and framed on our walls.

 

                  Commemorating 52 years of friendship

Friendships are undone by various means, death being the grimmest, and ours recently has been fragmented. Two have slipped off to eternal rest, Vic being the first to go in May of 2019, and John following in May of 2020. Within days Chuck and I will meet in Kingsland, Texas to pay our respects to John at his Covid19-delayed memorial service. Friends to the end, our number now cut by half.