My 90th was like no other. Thanks to clever innovations by younger members of my family, readership exploded here yesterday. The blast unleashed a flood of good wishes and made my sweet day even sweeter.
As most newcomers may have discovered, this blog is unfocused and hard to classify. I don’t stick to classic medical experiments, or travel, or world affairs, or politics, or literature, but I’ve toyed with all of these topics here, and I plan to follow that undisciplined path as we move forward. My rationale? If it interests me, it may interest you. One extraordinary essayist expressed this notion with exquisite clarity.
The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest. He is a fellow who thoroughly enjoys his work, just as people who take bird walks enjoy theirs. Each new excursion of the essayist, each new “attempt,” differs from the last one and takes him into new country. This delights him. Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays. E. B. White (see here)
Perhaps I’ve exposed myself here most openly in my two-part series titled, My First Year of Blogging, and My Books (see those here, and here). Those reveal a bit of my background, not always exemplary, and also explain why I’ve chosen to post installments of my novel, The Colors of Medicine, on this site. (Hmmm, is it really partly autobiographical?) Overall, more than 50 essays have been posted here. Feel free to browse.
To come back to my 90th birthday, last night’s celebration was highlighted by the astonishing appearance at dinner, just before we ordered, of my daughter, Anne, who had secretly flown down from Chicago to surprise me. Another great moment brought about merely by sliding safely into the Big Nine-O. I recommend the process to all. A photo was of course taken. In order to gather all, the celebration with my son, Greg, and his family was delayed until tonight, so more frolicking is on tap for me. How lucky is that?
Today, I proudly announce, I’ve landed upon an elevated plateau, the one labeled Age 90, the Big NINE O. I saw it coming, of course, but even that advanced warning didn’t diminish the grin-producing pleasure streaking through me as I awakened this morning. I’ve actually arrived! I know of no prizes given to those who hang around this planet for nine decades. Nevertheless, I consider it to be a minor accomplishment (not to mention a lucky one), something like back-flipping into a pool without a splash. I’m aging happily!
In the accompanying photo (taken in this morning’s sunshine), I’m seated in front of my version of one of Frank Stella’s works, one I painted some 30 years ago.
Aging, by its very nature, demands changes, and the latter half of life is lived on a downward slope. I’m okay with that. In fact, I’m still sliding downward with glee. To report that I’ve lost a lot during my advancing years is like reporting that leaves drop from trees as the days shorten. Nevertheless, I remain reasonably mobile. Nearly every day I set off for walks ranging from 30 to 60 minutes, The longer jaunts, over mildly uneven terrain, cover more than three miles, all this with minimal increases in my heart rate and little puffing.
I own no hearing aids and peer into most of each day with eyes uncovered by lenses. I do, however, don glasses at times while driving, or watching a movie, or when settling down with book or newspaper.
My good balance continues to keep me from stumbling, a fact that reminds me of my favorite contemporary essayist, Joseph Epstein (1). He, upon reaching 70, reported that he had begun to use the handrail when descending stairs. I’m a second-floor guy, and I usually head downward straight in the middle of the stairway, arms swinging. Admittedly, caution creeps in when I step down a staircase while packed together with others, say in a crowd surging out from a symphony concert. At those times, I skim a hand along a rail, just in case.
I haven’t, of course, escaped the inevitable decay. Examples are abundant and obvious. My joints show signs of rust. My memory has more holes than all the golf courses in Phoenix (even simple facts often refuse to come out of hiding when summoned), and my analytic skills, such as they once were, now lurk behind impenetrable barriers. All of this I’ve accepted with what I believe is the proper spirit.
In short, I’m extremely grateful for all that remains in working order, and most days I’m pleased as punch to be alive. Reasons abound. I’m fortunate to have a son and a daughter, both with families I love and admire. I have a small nucleus of friends, fewer than I would prefer, but nevertheless they too add color to my life. Existence continues to amaze me.
Even puttering with this blog gives me a sense of – I search for a word – fulfillment! Admittedly it takes more effort than my antiquated brain had imagined, but I find satisfaction while writing the little essays I serve up here. Writing actually does seem to stimulate my diminishing population of neurons, to keep them from dozing when I’m so engaged. For that reason, I shall continue essaying, and opining. I’ve revealed a selection of my adventures, along with some misadventures, (see one here). More are on the way. Stay tuned!
This photo was taken last summer. On the wall beyond the Stella painting is my version of one of Edvard Munch’s works.
I don’t intend to make this a photo gallery, but I just received the shot below. It was taken yesterday by my granddaughter, Megan, as we had breakfast together.
May this year fill you with cheer and gratitude. May you have fewer Covid worries and more mask-free days. May you enjoy warm, gratifying moments with friends and relatives. May you endure fewer chilling travel restrictions. May you soak up 365 days of simple pleasures. Happy New Year, 2022!
I’ve now steadied my blogging legs with more than a full year of experience. Last year I posted a new essay about once a week. I plan to increase my output this year, as I’ll mention below. This site has gradually added more readers and subscribers, so I’m optimistic about the year ahead.
Most of my posts focus on travel, medical experimentation, literature, or politics. All earlier posts are still available on this site, so if you missed reading about the first human heart catheterization, this accomplished in 1929 by a young German doctor (the heart he catheterized was his own), you can find that story by clicking (here). I’ve also described my personal experience with cardiac catheterization (here).
I’ve traveled through much of Europe by train, plane, bus, and automobile. Many of these trips are described in my Travel category. Luckily, in all my wanderings I’ve only been tossed into the clink once, that being in Madrid, as I describe in the fourth installment of my account of traveling through the Iberian Peninsula (here). Please feel free to browse through my earlier postings. And please tell me which ones piqued your interest.
This year I’ll begin posting serial installments of my novel, The Colors of Medicine (here), this beginning on January 3rd and continuing daily unless I’m diverted by other obligations. I would love to hear your comments as the story develops. Every opinion, critical or otherwise, will be appreciated.
Do you get charged up over holidays? For most of them I don’t, but the pair now approaching always key me up in the right way, sharpening my focus on family and friends, and intensifying a feeling of – there’s no better word for it – JOY. I can’t explain what triggers it, but genuine joy pops up every year. I’m on the upslope right now, feeling great.
I grew up saying “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!” so I now wish the same to all of you. If that phrase doesn’t ring your bell, please have the happiest of holidays.
This year I’m also looking forward to the new year with mixed emotions, a combination of excitement, trepidation, and considerable anxiety, all because of the enterprise I mentioned earlier. In short, beginning in January, I’m going to serialize my novel, The Colors of Medicine on this website (See here for details).
I’ll keep each installment short, probably no more than a thousand words each time, so you can occasionally savor the beauty of my words, and cringe as I expose my missteps. My anxiety, of course, stems from fear that I’ll at times be running in public dressed only in my underwear.
So spread the word, PLEASE, to your family, neighbors, and even distant cousins, and tell them the show is about to begin (I wear Jockey briefs). Encourage them to subscribe to my blog, and if you haven’t signed up yourself, please do so now.
I know a number of you have tried to subscribe and failed. Unfortunately this is not a rare phenomenon with the platform I’m using. It fails at times. So if that has happened to you, I apologize and offer Plan B. If you, or others you know, are unable to subscribe by using the Subscribe to Blog via Email box on my site, simply email me at kengoetz4@gmail.com and I will personally notify you each time a new post is up.
P.S.
The images are of the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri, a shopping center that has been decorated with Christmas lights annually for over 90 years (See here). ‘Tis the Season of Joy!
The Wuhan Institute of Virology (See here) has earned its badge of notoriety. Now a prominent Harvard professor is likely to draw attention to another Wuhan establishment, The Wuhan University of Technology (See here).
Professor Charles Lieber, a renowned authority on nanotechnology, had a decade-long academic partnership with that Wuhan Technical University. Today a federal court in Boston found Professor Lieber guilty of accepting payments from a Chinese government talent program, one designed to advance China to the top of the scientific world.
The professor was convicted of receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars, these amounts paid in cash or in funds deposited into a Chinese bank account, monies that the professor apparently did not report on his income tax forms. There is more to the story, but those are the key elements.
The take home message? The connection between China and professor Lieber is another example of a foreign government dangling money to recruit world-renowned scientists for purposes, one might assume, not exactly focused on the good of all mankind.
Below is the second installment from the beginning of my revised memoir. This part is newly added and does not appear in the original Bending the Twig (See here). As I explained in my previous post, the revised manuscript is as yet unpublished.
I was twenty-six when I enrolled in medical school, older than most of my classmates, but not necessarily more mature. I spent four years in the Air Force before completing my undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin, studying diligently for the first time in my life and graduating with high honors, and high hopes.
I expected medical school to be more inspiring than my undergraduate courses, more interesting, more challenging. How could it not be? I sprinted off from the opening bell, racing through every course in the head of the pack. Everything was new and exciting, everything was different. I galloped happily along for some weeks until I suddenly realized what had become obvious. This different wasn’t what I had expected. This different was dull memorization. This different numbed my brain. This different meant we students were to salt away every name of the tiniest branches of ordinary arteries and recall them by rote for one single purpose, to provide answers to questions on anatomy examinations, even though we knew with certainty that such minutia would not inform the diagnosis or treatment of one single patient during our entire lifetimes. To be fair, parts of our curriculum were valuable for fledgling physicians, but I discounted those and bemoaned the dreary memorization. My classmates grumbled, yet nearly all of them adapted to the program, shrugging off its obvious weaknesses and dutifully shoveling micro-facts into their heads. But it was too much for me. I belly-flopped into rebellion.
While my classmates continued to pull doggedly on their oars, I splashed behind, trying not to take on too much water. Disaffected and disappointed, I cut lectures and avoided laboratory sessions. I read novels, short stories, and poetry rather than textbooks. I played the perfect fool. I was embarrassed by my untoward behavior, miserable day and night, but too stubborn to hit the brakes. For most of that dismal year, I was a frazzled mess, my fuel gauge bumping against zero, my digestive tract in painful overdrive. Finally, after an eternity, the school term ended, and I, fool to the end, capped off my most annoying course with one final defiant act, one so unruly and recalcitrant that I expected to be drummed out of medical school on that very day. But rather than getting the boot, I received a stunning gift, one that eased me into summer and propelled me, triumphantly I thought, into the second year of medical school. I’ll come to that story, but even now that dark year pains me. I have no explanation for why I behaved so badly, why my life at times has gone off track, but others have suggested that my formative years, those unrolled in these pages, may have planted fertile seeds of rebellion.
As I confessed in my previous post, I have ulterior motives for introducing these paragraphs (see that here). First of all, I’d like to whet your appetite to read my revised book (assuming it ever becomes one).
Another motive is a bit more twisted. I’ll try to explain. The published version of Bending the Twig, is basically the story of my first nineteen years. Little of my life after my less-than-perfect start is mentioned in that book. A number of readers have suggested that I cap my childhood memoir off with one describing my later life.
I’ve always brushed that suggestion aside, saying my early years were much more interesting than anything that went on since. Truthfully, I have had a string of uncommon escapades throughout my lifetime, but I doubt I’ll ever squeeze my adult years into a book.
Why? Certain blemishes in my adulthood would be embarrassing to reveal. Case in point. My first year of medical school, sketched briefly in those three paragraphs above, stuck painfully in my memory for decades. Finally, a few years ago, I eased my ache by writing about that nasty year, but stealthily disguising it as fiction. I wrote a novel, calling it The Colors of Medicine, and revealing in it how I botched that disastrous year.
Writing about that ugly time was an adventure! I had no inkling how much work it would require, and I made more wrong turns than a mouse in a maze. I wrote entire scenes, many of them in excruciating detail, and then decided to dump them, many hours of effort down the drain.
Still, in the end, it was all worthwhile, for I managed to create my version of the world and to send my protagonist, Martin Cromlech, to medical school at the University of Wisconsin. In four long chapters I fiendishly forced Martin, as a first year medical student, to follow a course much like mine. That set me on fire! I actually grinned at times while striving to make Martin stumble almost as badly as I once had stumbled.
Remembering this, recalling how I bumbled along while writing the novel, made me wonder whether others might enjoy learning how I, an obvious tyro, tripped over every obstacle known to writers. So I’ve decided to serialize my novel here, posting brief installments of The Colors of Medicine, probably daily, and often adding what I was thinking, rightly or wrongly, while I wrote that part.
But I’ll hold off until after the holidays. Starting early in January, I’ll begin posting small installments of The Colors of Medicine here, often accompanied by comments describing what I was thinking as I wrote, and continue until I’ve gone through the entire novel. If you know of anyone who might enjoy this sort of thing, please pass the word along.
I will of course continue to post other essays as I have done over the past year. Stay tuned!
I passed a minor milestone about a month ago. I noted it silently at the time, but, as I said, it was a minor event, so I didn’t even celebrate the occasion with a Manhattan, my favorite drink. What was that minor achievement? Drum roll, please. I completed my first year of blogging with a post about the joys of a Finnish smoke sauna (see here).
Perhaps surprisingly, as my earliest readers can testify, I’ve never once mentioned here the two books I’ve written. That’s about to change. Why? Because over the past months, I’ve been revising my childhood memoir (originally published as Bending the Twig – see here–), and I’d like to see what you folks think of my new version.
So I’m going to reveal my new opening here, splitting it into two brief posts. Those of you who have read the original book will notice little change in the paragraphs below. But the ones to follow in a day or two are entirely new.
Do I have ulterior motives? Of course! First motive? I have neither literary agent nor publisher lined up to put my revised edition between covers, so if you happen to know either of these species, I’d be delighted if you would pass the word along.
Second motive? I’ll keep that secret until I post the rest of the opening. Ready? Here’s the beginning of my revised Chapter One.
“You’re a lucky boy.”
Right. Real lucky. And rich. And ten-and-a-half feet tall. I glanced at my grandfather. His eyes, inscrutable behind wire-framed bifocals, focused on the wing joint where his knife worked.
I ripped open the tender skin of my pheasant and stripped off its iridescent plumage, mulling his odd comment. With the point of my hunting knife I dislodged a few pellets from the breast. We sat on low stools in the backyard, cleaning birds after our Saturday afternoon hunt.
“Yep, you’re lucky,” Grandpa repeated brightly. He was seventy-one, rheumatic but reasonably spry, still working for a living, still accurate with a shotgun. Until that moment I had considered him to be level-headed.
I was sixteen. My younger brother and I lived with our maternal grandparents. Our two sisters were seventy miles away, living with an aunt and uncle. Admittedly, things were going fairly well for me just then, but calling me lucky was like calling the two dollars in my pocket a fortune.
“This one’s hardly shot up at all,” I said, slitting open its belly and catching a whiff of guts and blood. I slipped my fingers under the ribs and ripped out the heart and fragments of lung, then the windpipe and gullet. Had someone at that moment predicted I would one day carve the corresponding organs from a cadaver’s chest and call the vital tubes by their more scientific-sounding names, trachea and esophagus, I would have fallen down laughing.
But I would eventually make my way to medical school and troop along with my new classmates into the anatomy laboratory for that first time, our nostrils alert to the unfamiliar air laced with formaldehyde, alcohol, and preserved human flesh, our anxieties concealed beneath shells of exaggerated confidence. I would find my cadaver, an elderly male gray as slate, encased in his metal box, and I would take up my scalpel — and balk. Though I was adept with my well-honed hunting knife, quick to cut and quick to finish, I froze before that preserved gray body, for I had been bruised by Death’s power, and that lifeless form recalled loved ones I had lost. My mother, and later my father, had been placed inside more ornate boxes, and I had watched them being slowly lowered beyond scalpel’s reach. I stood before my cadaver, waiting for my heart to slow, and finally pressed my keen blade into that cold throat — breaking the spell. In the months that followed I calmly sliced through my cadaver’s remains with scalpel and scissors, sawed through his bones, cut out his silent heart and gritty liver, probed his rubbery brain, my knowledge expanding as he diminished. But even though I had learned much since that distant afternoon when my grandfather called me lucky, I had not yet grasped his meaning.
Those of you who have been reading this blog may remember I’ve written about the virus from Wuhan a number of times. On the basis of earlier evidence, I concluded that Covid‑19 likely originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. (Those posts can be found by clicking here, here, and here).
As a rule, scientists examine all pertinent information available, and, because I once was a
scientist, I now report that an article in the November 18, 2021 issue of Science, a prestigious
journal, leans in the other direction. It argues that the virus jumped from infected raccoon dogs to
humans. (here).
The origin of Covid-19 is of obvious interest because it ignited a catastrophic pandemic.
Accurate numbers are difficult to find, but it’s been estimated that by the end of October 2021, the
virus had killed nearly 750,000 people in this country alone (See here), our part of this world-wide tragedy
In the Science article mentioned above, Michael Worobey argues that the man originally
considered to be the “first case” of Covid-19 was not actually the original human infected, but
rather that it was a female seafood vendor at the Huanan Market. I won’t go into all of his
arguments (they have a number of turns), but he mentions that SARS-related coronaviruses were
found in raccoon dogs during the SARS outbreak, that the Huanan Market had raccoon dogs
caged there, and that a good number of the early hospitalized COVID-19 cases (but not the
majority) were associated with this market.
According to press reports, expert virologists are split on whether this new analysis swings the
balance, a number of them saying the arguments do not convince them of the virus’s origin. But
one, Peter Daszak reportedly is convinced by Worobey’s analysis. Perhaps Daszak’s opinion
should be taken with a grain of salt, because he, as I’ve mentioned earlier (read here), clearly
has a vested interest in this issue.
Not surprisingly, this issue has worked its way into politics as Garry Kasparov, the former
long-time world chess champion and current Putin antagonist, wrote in The Wall Street Journal of November 18, 2021. (here)
Putting ideology and politics ahead of reason is as dangerous as putting them ahead of justice. Mr. Trump and his administration used the possibility that Covid-19 originated in a Wuhan laboratory to bash China and deflect attention from his administration’s catastrophic pandemic response. . .
The left’s reaction to Mr. Trump’s rhetoric was instructive. Anyone who mentioned the lab-leak theory was assailed as pro-Trump. Social-media companies removed posts mentioning it. By January 2021, it was obvious that shutting down debate was the true antiscience position. (My
emphasis) Invaluable months were lost, time the Chinese Communist Party used to destroy data and spread disinformation about the virus’s origins. We may never know the truth, but we do know there was a coverup.
To my way of thinking, people don’t cover up things that don’t need covering up.
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.
Martti had just launched me and his boat from his hand-built ramp. He then joined me and rowed us out toward our fishing nets.
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.
Rowing through the fog
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?
We made it!
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.
Holding my trusty spear, one fashioned by Martti, the man in the cap.
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.
Notice smoke pouring from top of left wall. The butt ends of logs aligned vertically above my right arm mark the location of an internal wall separating the smoke sauna from sleeping quarters on the right. Notice also the homemade weapon in my left hand. Later I would demonstrate my remarkable proficiency at spear fishing. With no training whatsoever, I was able to perform as masterly as a wizard with that sharp device, a story I may relate on a future date.
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.
