Keno's Sauna

Alone in the woods of Alaska stands a solitary sauna decaying back to the earth. This is the story, based of that sauna and the man who built it. 

A few years ago my brother and I built our own sauna at the family cabin in the small community of Hope, Alaska. In the process of getting ready I asked locals about saunas in the area. We were looking for examples to study for ideas. This is where I learned that the now-dead old-timer goldminer, Herman Keno, had a Finnish-style sauna. I already knew of Keno from my early childhood but it turned out there was much more to his story. 

Way back in 1971, my family took a hike up Bear Creek, in Hope, Alaska. The small town of Hope is located on the Kenai Peninsula about two hours drive south of Anchorage. It is not widely known but Hope had an gold rush in 1896 that preceded the great Klondike rush by one year. Before Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau even existed, thousands rushed to the "cities" of Hope and nearby Sunrise. During this era all of the small creek valleys leading into the Turnagain Arm district were thoroughly explored and prospected. Bear Creek is one of these valleys more or less part of Hope's larger Resurrection Creek valley system. 

Bear Creek intrigued my parents. They had just helped found the Hope and Sunrise Historical Society after purchasing a cabin in the area. In 1971, one of the Society's first efforts was to reprint a remarkably detailed map from 1912 which showed roads, trails, named mines, marked cabins and mining structures throughout the area. This was the Sleem map. By the 1970s large sections of the area had been abandoned by miners. Old trails and even road had long since become overgrown. The Sleem map revealed a number of cabins and mines up near the top of Bear Creek valley. Wouldn't it be fun to see what was still up there? In the early summer of 1971, my family planned an exploratory hiking trip. 

The first night of the hike we spent in Keno's cabin part way up the valley. Keno was a Finn. He was one of the few remaining old timers who moved to and stuck it out in Hope after the gold rush and eked out a living. It was known that he arrived in Hope sometime after the Nome gold rush, which was at its height approximately from 1899 to 1909. When he was in Nome he worked primarily as a blacksmith. Maybe he had some money saved up from Nome? Maybe he did odd jobs? He did keep up mining claims in Bear Creek so it's possible that he made a modest living from them. Although it was probably nothing significant. After arriving in Hope he established a load mine with a partner up above the tree line of the Bear Creek valley. In his later years he lived by himself. However he did it, he managed to survive, alone and mostly isolated, in a hand-built log cabin on the lower section of Bear Creek.

To this day, Keno has a dark reputation in the small Hope community. Rumors persist about the disappearance of his mining partner in the 1950s. Whether there was foul play or not, he is more remembered as a tough Finn, someone who was resilient, quiet and kept to himself. He also had a reputation as a heavy drinker and sometimes a mean one. The late Billy Miller, himself a longtime local, was at least a generation or two younger than the goldrush old timers. He loved Hope, the land and the lore and ways of the people who came before him.  He was the source of much of the information in this story and told me of the existence of Keno's sauna. I'm sure a few others knew of the structure. But no one else knew what it actually was, or why it was built or what it meant to someone born in Finland. 

Billy also told me a personal story about how he saved Keno's life. He was driving down the Hope road in the middle of winter when he thought he saw a foot sticking up out of a snowbank. Billy stopped his truck, ground the transmission into reverse and backed up to double check. Sure enough, it was a human leg. He got out to find Keno passed out behind a pile of plowed snow. Keno was purple and near dead. Billy dragged him into the bed of his pickup and then back to his cabin where he propped him up in front of his large turn-of-the-century kitchen wood cook stove. Eventually Keno recovered, sobered up and went on his way. 

Every so often Keno had a habit of going into Anchorage and picking up prostitutes or maybe lady drinking friends and be out them back to Hope. Some of the woman were native Alaskan. He had a reputation of spending a few days or weeks with a woman and then dumping her out on the Hope road. Back then this was pretty tough business since the Hope road was a single-lane dirt road 14 miles off the main Seward Highway. In the winter it might be quite a while before someone drove by. The road might go for weeks before locals or the State got around to getting it plowed.

Keno died in his cabin sometime in the winter of 1970-71. His body was found in the spring when someone thought to check on him. It is remembered that locals who were cleaning up his affairs found a skull. I've heard that it was in his cabin and also that it was found on the grounds of his property or on his claim. A search was conducted but no body was found. One version of the story was that it was a skull of a native woman. Was this a skull of some woman he brought from Anchorage? Was this his old mining partner? Maybe he simply found the skull of some previous miner? Also around the turn of the century, the Dena'ina Athabaskans camped at the base of Bear Creek not too far down from his cabin. It's possible he found a Dena'ina grave. No one knew for sure, but due to his prior behavior with woman, and the earlier unexplained absence of his old partner, suspicions remain.

He was old when he died. The winter must have gotten to be too much for him. When my family did our hike up Bear Creek the weather was so rainy my parents elected to sleep in Keno's cabin instead of a tent. We slept in the open loft of his cabin. I don't remember much of this night other than I was extremely disturbed since the adults had been talking of the recent finding his corpse. In the morning we explored his cabin. Everything about it was old and mysterious. I remember it being filled with a fantastic collection of abandoned relics and glorious junk: broken tools and mining implements, worn out leather boots and old beer bottles. Coffee cans and tobacco tins stored miscellaneous rusty bits. My father related the story of when his body was found, glass jars containing Keno's piss were stored all around the cabin. That winter he had become either too sick or too indifferent to go outside in the cold to relieve himself. These are the sort things that get seared into a young person's memory. 

One of the other reasons my parents wanted to visit the cabin was that it was slated by the Chugach National Forest Service to be destroyed. This was an era when the forest service had a misguided policy of burning old cabins. They considered them to be a nuisance and fire hazard. Probably Forest Service bureaucrats wanted to erase any potential legal gray areas of land use and ownership. Abandoned cabins could present problems if someone moved into them, renewed a mining claim or somehow tried to "prove up" on the land. During this era a number of historically-significant cabins in this region were wantonly destroyed.

We spent the night in the cabin and somehow I survived Keno's ghost. In the morning we hiked up the valley. Somewhere farther up the trail I distinctly remember the family coming upon a drinking ladle placed on a hook next to small creek trickling down the steep hillside. It was intentionally left as a stop for hikers to get fresh drinking water. To us, the ladle represented a living remnant of hospitality and kindness from Alaska's gold-mining past and possibly a hint of another side to this old man's personality. 

There was also a nice old log structure, more like a work shop, surprisingly almost right on the trail. It was still fairly intact but the roof had recently caved in. We didn't get too far past here. Either we ran out of steam, the weather turned bad, or we were hindered by alders tangling the old road. We never found the mining cabins my parents were looking for but it was a great outing.

Not long after our stay, Keno's cabin was torn down. The Hope community rallied and it was spared being burned down by the Forest Service. A local resident was allowed to take it apart and remove it. The plan was to rebuild it closer in town. Sadly it was dismantled but never put back together. The logs were left somewhere where they have certainly since rotted into oblivion. This is particularly sad because Keno had a reputation for being a fine rustic craftsman. The cabin had a gambrel (barn-shaped) roof. Integral in the log construction was the second-story loft where we stayed. This cabin was commonly regarded as one of the larger and finer of the extant log structures from the early days. 

The cabin is gone but a few items of Keno's remain in the community. My family salvaged his old beat-up and leaking copper water boiler. There is his hand-made table which is now in the Hope and Sunrise Historical Society Museum. It is used as staging in the school house. 

Keno's table, now at the Hope Museum

Billy Miller, rescued his hand-made barrel stove. It too is on display at the museum. The stove had been left for trash outside after the cabin was torn down. It was a crude device but it serves as an example of some of this old Finn's great ingenuity and craftsmanship. Barrel stoves are typically made out of used 55-gallon steel drums. These days there are kits that come with ready-made cast-iron pieces: a door, legs and a stove pipe mounting flange. As a blacksmith, he had the skill and tools to work his own stove from scratch. The most interesting feature is an oven built completely into and through the cylindrical barrel. The ovens of wood cook stoves are a little tough to get hot enough for baking. This oven would have had no problems getting plenty hot! Also the top had two burners for stove-top cooking. Each burner had a lid which could be slid aside so pots or pans could be heated directly over the open fire. Once the cooking was done the lid could be closed to keep smoke out of the cabin.

Detail of the oven. The hinge and the door latch remain but the door is missing.

 

As mentioned it was Billy Miller who told me of Keno's sauna, This was what lead me down the path of this personal recollection and got me asking locals about Keno. Once I learned about the sauna, I had to return to the site to see if for myself. 

Not far from the foundation of Keno's former cabin, the sauna structure still remains, but only just barely. The sauna is built very much like his cabin. It is well-constructed and hand hewn. Differently sized and shaped logs are carefully notched and fitted together. Mirroring the former cabin, it has a gambrel roof. Benches are built higher off the ground, about three feet up, to elevate the bather to where the heat lingers in the small space. Closer examination reveled that benches are integrally built, Lincoln Log-style, into the walls. This helps demonstrate that this little structure was indeed put together for one purpose only: sweat bathing.

Detail of the bench from the exterior as it is built into the sauna

The same bench on the inside of the sauna. Photo taken through an opening in the roof

Surprisingly it had a poured-concrete floor, complete with marbled vinyl tile and a drain. Of course the hand-mixed concrete wasn't very thick and the floor is now broken up by the intrusion of tree roots. Oddly I could still make out remnants of padded red vinyl that once covered the benches, vaguely suggestive of a 1960s Anchorage massage parlor. The finished floor and vinyl benches must have been a strange contrast to the rough cuts and bare logs. In spite of this, I bet it worked just fine. 

I couldn't make out whether or not there had been a stove pipe in the roof. The back section of the roof was just too far gone. But, judging by the soot on the walls of the interior and lack of any evidence of a stove, my best guess is that Keno's sauna was a traditional Finnish smoke sauna or savusauna. This is where a fire is built in an unvented stove or simply in rocks inside the structure. After the sauna reaches the appropriate temperature the fire is put out and the door opened to air out the room. Then the sauna begins.

For a cold plunge, Bear Creek is just outside the front door. The setting couldn't be more beautiful. Going from this sauna into the creek would have been wonderful. The creek, as you might imagine, is clear and ice cold. I know this because during my return pilgrimage I was compelled to strip down and jump in. 

The view from just outside the door of the sauna towards where Keno would take his cold dip

Today two towering cotton woods are slowly squeezing the sauna together like a vice. The roof has collapsed and the back wall is mostly rotted back to forest humus. 

It's sad that such a beautiful location is possibly marred by the disturbing tales of Keno's behavior. Still, standing outside the sauna on a sunny summer day in the midst of the wild forest conveys nothing but peace. Who knows what went on in the mind of this man? Whatever the case, I'm sure the sauna gave him profound consolation and strength. It helped him cope with a rough and challenging life of long cold dark winters and solitude.  

Combustion air upgrade, wood-fired sauna

I want to share an innovation I came up with that provides fresh combustion air to the wood stove of my sauna. I use clothes dryer ducting to do this. It's relatively simple but it makes for huge improvement in the overall efficiency of the heater. I don't remember how I came up with this. Not that there's much to it but I'd like to think it was an original idea. Maybe it was but usually these sort of things come from elsewhere and I just don't remember.

I was forced to recently refurbish the air intake. Doing so inspired me to write about it so I could share it with fellow sauna enthusiasts. 

What we see here are the remnants of the old clothes dryer aluminum ducting that I used as the fresh air ducting. There's maybe something related to the heat and/or the caustic chemistry of wood ash that caused the aluminum to lose it's malleability. The aluminum skin became wispy and started to crack and fall apart. It lasted about 15 years but now needed to be replaced.

First, some basic wood-fired sauna theory: There are two ways you can situate a wood burning stove for a sauna. One has the feed door on the outside of the sauna space. This might be completely outside or in the antechamber/changing room. The wood stove goes through a wall. The advantage of this is that it keeps smoke outside the sweat space and none of the heat generated by the wood stove is wasted by the fire pulling it into the stove.

There are disadvantages to this though. For one it's a little more of a hassle to manage the burn of the fire since you have to go outside to feed or check on the fire. Second, the wall needs to be built with some consideration so the heat of the stove doesn't, ahem, burn everything down. This is usually pretty straightforward and done with sheet metal or masonry. Third--and which to me is a deal breaker--is that you do not get the primordial, soul nurturing of seeing and listening to the fire from inside the hot dark sauna space.

The other more common method is to have the stove entirely inside the sauna. One of the big draw backs of doing this is that the fire and the "chimney effect" of the fire and stovepipe draw a lot of air out of the sauna space. Also if the fire is dampered, or somehow the chimney becomes blocked, smoke can get in the sauna space. Even worse, in some rare circumstances poisonous carbon monoxide can fill the sauna space. 

Wood stoves consume a lot of air. I remember on certain particularly cold nights growing up in Alaska watching a thick cloud of "fog" roll in from the door and snake it's way along the floor into the firebox of the wood stove. It was eerie and mesmerizing. Sometimes it would be a layer 18 inches or so thick. It would completely obscure the floor. This experience gave me a strong visual impression of the enormous volume of air that gets pulled though the sauna into the stove to feed a fire. That's a lot of cold air getting pulled in from the outside into what should be a hot space!

When I built my urban wood-fired sauna I had this experience in mind. I improvised a method for getting fresh outside air for the wood stove directly to the fire. This would help improve the efficiency of the wood burner: more heat in the intended space and less of it wasted going up the stove pipe. It also provided some assurance that we had fresh air to breathe.

What I came up with is simple and it works surprisingly well. Essentially it is a simple flexible aluminum clothes dryer duct routed so that it terminates right in front of the wood stove door. 

Let the photos demonstrate:

Here's the vent on the outside. (Forgive the un-aesthetic T1-11 and plastic vent cover. No one ever sees this wall!) There were louvers on the vent cover which I broke off. The louvers were there to help prevent cold air from being drawn toward the interior. Nope. We want that! The grill stays on to keep the critters out.

This photo is taken under a bench near the wood stove. The wood stove is to the right just on the opposite side to the cementitious tile backer board. In the recent refurbishment, I replaced both the vent cover and the aluminum wall ducting. Here (above) is the new vent coming in through the exterior wall on the left. The new ducting is pushed through the backer board on the right.

Why is it always so damn hard to slip the ducting on over the vent pipes!

A cementitious cider block is placed near the ducting to protect it from being crushed by fire wood which will soon be piled back under the bench.

This photo shows the ducting going through the backer board (on the left), through another cinder block and terminating right near the door to the wood stove.

It may not be pretty but it works great! My sauna uses an old 1970s-era home heating wood stove. It's welded plated steel so it could potentially handle drilling and welding an air intake but with my method, I didn't have to do this. The ducting was quick, inexpensive and very effective.

For a variety of reasons, I typically do not damper the stove. In fact I often leave the door cracked open just a little to help concentrate the air movement into the stove. This acts like a black smith's air bellows, blowing air onto the fire to really feed it. I want the fire to burn fast and hot. I'm not trying to keep the fire burning over night and since this is an urban sauna I want to minimize bothering my neighbors with smoke. Also a hot oxygen-rich fire reduces the impact on the overall regional air quality--something I care about.

Even though the entry door to the sauna is not particularly air tight, there's still enough negative air pressure for gobs of air to get pulled into the fire directly through the air duct. I know this because when the fire is going well I can put my hand in front of the duct and feel the rush of cool oxygen-rich air being drawn through the duct directly into the stove. The flow is similar to lightly blowing on your hand from about 8 inches away. It's really noticeable!

In summary, while my system is super rudimentary it is an important feature and it works great. In my experience, I believe some sort of provision for a combustion air intake should be made for all wood-fired saunas where the stove is on the inside. It does a lot to improve the heating efficiency and it helps keep the occupants safe.

 Happiness is a sauna with wood under the benches.

My Varusteleka haul

I recently discovered the weird and wonderful Finnish military surplus store, Varusteleka. I've always had a soft spot for surplus. Wool is a great fabric and practical utilitarian clothing tends to be my style. The site often has pretty darn funny, self-effacing descriptions of certain items. (Take for example these now-sold-out Russian army surplus boots.) Plus being in Europe, they have access to more exotic items, particularly former East Block stuff. There's a brick and mortar store in Helsinki but they currently offer $10 flat-rate shipping to the U.S. This makes it hard to resist making orders even for clothing where the fit might be questionable.

Related to this blog, I was surprised to find a couple really useful items for my sauna/bathing/swimming enthusiasm. Here's what I scored:

Towels! 
These are almost certainly from the former socialist republic of Czechoslovakia. Being small they were definitely intended as institutional/military towels. They were designed to get men dried with industrial efficiency. One towel is just large enough to dry someone off. While a few in the batch I got are sort of a dimpled textured cotton, none are terry cloth. For some this may be a no-go. Most Americans these days take for granted a flat piece of fabric is not a towel. (Those who feel this way have not discovered the wonderful Turkish towel tradition of the peshtemal, but more on that later.) 

For me, however, this is exactly what makes them great: The small size means that they work well for fitting in travel bags. I can pack two if I go out to a friend's sauna or, when visiting a public sauna, I can save a few dollars on the towel fee. I always keep one in my shoulder bag now for impromptu swimming in the Willamette River or laps at the local community pool. Since they are not terry cloth, they air dry more quickly and therefore tend to not get as smelly. They all come with a little loop so I can hang them up at work for on-the-go drying.

Why else do I love these towels? A few of them are cotton. But most seem to be a linen blend. This makes them softer and more absorbent. A few I absolutely treasure, as they are almost certainly 100% linen. They have a subtle sheen that is similar to my fancy vintage estate sale dinner napkins. They are silky smooth on the skin. Deelish!!!

It took about two and a half weeks for the box to arrive from Finland. Opening it up, I encountered a mysterious and compelling bouquet. Partly it was that characteristic military surplus odor. (What is that anyway? Rotting rubber?) This was mingled with a cloying but exotic Third-World-ish floral detergent fragrance. Bleech!!! I had to wash them all. Unfortunately, this messed up how they had arrived perfectly laundered and pressed. Since many of the towels are linen (or have a high linen content) they needed to be ironed. It's a huge time suck but I get an odd relaxing satisfaction with ironing these. (Maybe, if I keep buying them, I'll have to invest in an industrial pressing mangle?)

I ordered a fair number, all told I have somewhere around 50 now. Am I out of control? My intention is for them to live at the family cabin in Alaska. They can be used for the sauna there. The towels' inherent efficiency will work well for this purpose: They won't take up too much space. I can store a number of them in case we have guests and they will be easy to wash and identify as designated "sauna" towels. There will be enough so some can stay in rotation even while dirty ones are in Anchorage getting laundered.

Don't hate me! I may have bought them all out. There is however this Hungarian version still in stock--another small towel with hanging loop. They're just maybe not linen but still great!

Sandals!
One difficult lesson I've learned with "sauna-ing" in Alaska is that you really need proper footwear when standing outside in the snow. For my Dad's urban Anchorage sauna, to cool off we usually run around in the back alley. It's relatively private and/or it's fun to, on rare occasions, alarm the new neighbors or tourists with nudity. There's a vacant lot to roll in the snow and the alley is a good place to move around and air out as you cool off, getting the core temperature down for the next sauna hot cycle.

Over the years I've toughened myself up (or gotten used to) dunking in extremely cold water or giving myself snow baths. In fact I love this and saunas just don't feel as good without it. But the one thing I can't get used to is having my bare feet freeze while standing on ice or snow. Oddly enough, it's ok to be completely naked in even subzero temperatures but with bare feet on ice, it doesn't take long for them to hurt really badly even if it's comparatively warm out.

photo credit: Varusteleka.com

Whenever I visit Alaska somehow I never seem to have the right footwear for the sauna. I've often settled for awkwardly slipping into a pair of Sorel boots or lace-up shoes just so I have something to wear in the snow. Then I found these sandals at Varustelka. Sure I could pick up some dollar store flip-flops or maybe some no-name Crocs but these are just too cool! Being army fatigue green, my feet will be camouflaged if shit gets real. The Russian star and Cyrillic writing on the sole adds proper pro-level banya street cred to my sweat bathing. I've ordered enough to have a small sandal army for the saunas in Anchorage and at the cabin. No more frozen feet and we will be bathing in style! Plus they fit great: They're easy to slip on and off and they stay on my feet comfortably.  

I can imagine lots of Finns buying these for just the same purpose. I bet they are popular so the site seems to restock them in small quantities so they don't all sell out at once. Good luck grabbing some.

The hot springs of Hot Lake Resort

Lost in remote Eastern Oregon (yet conveniently only five miles off of I-84) is Hot Lake Springs Resort--a grand historic mineral hot springs resort that is remarkably open again for business.

If you are traveling on I-84, Hot Lake Springs can serve as a wonderful (if weird) layover. Or, if the timing is not quite right for spending the night, a short stop for a recuperative soak can be just the ticket for improving one's disposition during a long stint of driving.

The resort is steeped in the history of Europe and America's obsession with mineral water health spas and is one of many that thrived in the Pacific Northwest around the turn of the century. What compelled people to travel so far and spend so much time and money to soak in these remote mineral water baths?

When Hot Lake Springs was first built this spot must have seemed impressively isolated.  There was of course the city of La Grande, a mere 8 miles further down the line. In its heyday of the 1910s and 20s, La Grande was a small but well-established full-service western desert railroad/cattle town. But  you wouldn't really be aware of this if you got off the train at Hot Lake Sanitorium (sic). You could do this because Hot Lake had it's own train station (and post office). This enabled visitors to come directly from all over the U.S.

I imagine people traveling from the East Coast and getting off directly at Hot Lake.  Stepping off the train onto the platform at the station must have been something. Looking around you'd see great stretches of emptiness. But behind the lake of geothermally-heated mineral water with vapor wafting up into the hills, was the giant "modern" resort, seemingly plopped down in the middle of nowhere. A traveler might have been on trains for days clattering through the desolation of the Great Plains, the Rockies and eastern Oregon desert only to step off into an oasis resort of high grandeur. Visitors could maintain serious bragging rights of having traveled deep into to the Great American West without ever really having suffered the loss of any modern convenience.

Given the relatively isolated location, and considering when it was built, the facility was remarkably big and modern. The brick addition (as pictured above at the left) was completed in 1908 and became the new focal point of the complex. This three-story structure is most of what remains today. When completed, it boasted full modern appointments: indoor plumbing, central heating and electricity. Residents' rooms were airy and well lit: with tall ceilings, awning lights above the doors and big exterior windows. The third floor was a dedicated and modern medical facility which included a surgery. Contemporary accounts often refer to these services as the "Mayo Clinic of the West."

Photo Flickr user, Allen, taken from the Flickr group Hot Lake Resort (link at end of article)

Photo Flickr user, Allen, taken from the Flickr group, Hot Lake Resort

Look at that tile! Yowza! The counter top may be newer.

Photo: Flickr user, Allen, taken from the Flickr group Hot Lake Resort 

As stated, the 1908 brick structure was an add-on to an even earlier Victorian-era wood structure that was more-or-less built over the source waters of the hot spring. This earlier wood portion burned down in 1934. Even though the business recovered and carried on, the original section was never rebuilt. Since the original structure appears to have been built directly over the springs, I'm curious to know how it was utilized. Where and how did the Victorians take their water?

Photo: Flickr user, Allen, taken from the Flickr group Hot Lake Resort

At one point water from Hot Lake, as with many mineral water resorts of their day, bottled and sold the source mineral water.

A big part of the Hot Lake Resort story is its miraculous resurrection. Moving into the 20th century modern medicine replaced mineral hydrotherapy and business died off.  The resort closed in the 1950s and for the next few decades there were a succession of other tenants using the space. For a number of years it was completely vacant. The facility slowly crept into dereliction. At the its low point, vandals had smashed out all of the glass windows and the roof was seriously leaking and even missing in some sections.

Photo: Flickr user, Allen, taken from the Flickr group, Hot Lake Resort (link at end of article.)

In 2003 a family bought and began a significant rehabilitation. While the restoration is a blessing for bathing and history enthusiasts, here the story turns a little weird.

The restoration considers the building's history but in a way that is really odd. It's not so much a restoration as someone's fantasy/nostalgia recreation. The hotel rooms are redone with faux historical elements and are drenched in what I refer to as "potpourri excess." It's bed-and-breakfast cute gone wild. Here are some photos of my room:

And it's not just the excessive frill and artificial fragrance. Watch out for the the flocks of peacocks and geese on the grounds who tend to honk (at least in the case of the geese) and poop everywhere. Speakers outside and in the common areas play canned Big Band-era music from morning to evening. To make matters worse it was the same hour or so tape loop. I don't know how many times I heard Glen Miller's In the Mood. It made me feel rather crabby.

In spite of my complaints we are extremely lucky to have Hot Lake Resort back in business and the water, as it has been for thousands of years, is no joke. It comes out hot, 208 degrees, and is mineral laden. Sampling it with a good soak helps you understand why this place was so popular a hundred years ago. After a relaxing bath, all (most) of my grievances about the stay were forgiven.

There are a number of different soaking options at Hot Lake:

There is what remains of the old spring house that is filled with acrylic hot tubs and artificial plants.

Around the back of the spring house I thought these two outdoor claw-foot tubs had potential. Were they intended as cool-down cold plunge tubs or will they be set up for outdoor soaking? I would sure rather soak in the wonderful outdoors in these instead of the plastic tubs inside.

There's also the relic of an old brick structure. The water in here was super hot, almost too hot to stand, but I had the space to myself and it was wonderful.

 You can close this gate for a little privacy.

Stepping in the gate and just to the right is this little semi-private deck next to the private soaking area. The chairs face the soaking pool to the left.

Ahhhh!, a private pool of super hot water! The open trellised roof, old brick and vines winding down to the water made for wonderful atmosphere. The only negative was that soaking in this water with really challenging. It took me a while to adjust and even then and I could only stand soaking for five or so minutes at a time, after that I was cooked!

Next to this brick hot soaking relic is a neat-o waterwheel contraption that lifts, slows and cools the water for a series of outdoor soaking tubs. The water, at 208 degrees, as it comes out of the hillside, is near boiling so it needs this process to cool off for the next series of soaking pools.

From Hot Lake Resort, La Grande, Oregon

Water from the wheel pours  into a gutter which is channeled into the outdoor pools.

Again, I'm not a big fan of acrylic tubs.

My favorite was this one (above), a pool made out of cement and local rocks. The trouble with it was that it was the farthest one away from the water wheel and it was hard to keep it sufficiently hot. There was a fair amount of lake algae as well. I was warned about this by the staff but it didn't bother me at all. Relaxing, looking out over the lake, made it all worthwhile.

Here's another view of the cement outdoor pool taken from above, water vapor lifting up off the lake.

There is a very good Flickr group of photos of the resort/sanitarium. I used some of the photos for this post from that group. Thanks to Allen Sandquist, in particular, for making his collection available.

A Tinygogo bibliography

For the new year, I want to share some of the books that have helped inform my sense of mission with this site. I share these as an overview. Later I hope to explore some of the books below (and others) in more depth.

There are numerous how-to books on saunas and hot tubs. Most fall into the garden variety "home-improvement" category such as the Ortho and Sunset series of books. These have scintillating titles such as: Sunset Ideas for Hot Tubs, Spas and Home Saunas and Spas: Planning, Selecting and Installing. 

Still there are a few that stand out for their insight and vision, reading that informs us of the deeper meaning for enthusiast bathing. These are the books that I occasionally revisit for reference and rediscovery.

I hope what I share below will inspire you to seek and create some quality bathing in 2016. 

Let's start with five:

Cathedrals of the Flesh, Alexia Brue

Such a good read! Alexia Brue considers the possibility of opening her own Turkish Hammam in New York City. In order to properly appreciate this potential huge investment, she does a world tour, making careful study of the bathing customs of various countries by experiencing them for herself. (Her writing style reveals a certain wry joy for the weird and awkward that I particularly love.) Cathedrals is a travelogue written around the subject of indulgent pleasure seeking via bathing. What else is there to life?

___

Sweat, Mikkel Aaland

This is an indispensable book that explores the world of sweat bathing. It's important because it is one of the first books that provided information on sweat bathing from around the world. It's a great mix of well-researched material with some fun travel writing and personal story telling. Sweat, really gets the credit for being one of the first works that explores the shared commonalities of sweat bathing in numerous different cultures around the world. 

The title says it all. Just as Carl Sagan (coincidently working around the same time Sweat was written) integrated up-to-date scientific information from a wide array of sources to show us the "big picture" of how we fit into the universe, Mikkel Aaland synthesized diverse cultural and historical knowledge to tell us an important story: sweat bathing is a common reoccurring theme with how humans have traditionally cleaned themselves, communed socially and reconnected to being alive and human. We've just lost sight of these traditions in our culture of quick-and-easy morning showers. 

Mikkel has been covered earlier here at Tinygogo. He is responsible for the Perfect Sweat Summit which took place at Archimedes Banya in San Francisco.

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Getting Wet, Adventures in the Japanese Bath, Eric Talmadge

This book focuses exclusively on the Japanese national passion for bathing: ofuro, onsens and sentos (wood hot tubs/baths, hot springs and public bath houses) and other related bathing activities. Eric Talmadge is an Associated Press reporter based in Japan. He's lived there for a number of years now and really knows and loves sharing Japanese culture. As with Cathedrals of the Flesh, exploration of Japanese bathing culture becomes a great travelogue where we learn more about the country through amusing personal stories. 

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Undesigning the Bath, Leonard Koren

If bathing were a political movement, this would be my Little Red Book. It is my bathing manifesto. It's is out of print but worth tracking down. If anyone is considering building their own bath or sauna retreat, Undesigning the Bath is essential primary reading. Inside there are no "how-to's" but instead important philosophical conceptions on the aesthetics of the bathing space and how such spaces can become environments for deep reflection and satisfaction.

Leonard Koren was a speaker at the Perfect Sweat Summit. He is probably best known for being the founder/publisher/editor of Wet Magazine.

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The Sauna Book, Tom Johnson and Tim Miller

I don't know much about this book's background or the authors. Way back in the 1970s it probably competed for bookstore shelf space with Mikkel Aaland's Sweat as the book for do-it-yourselfers building their own backyard or basement saunas.

Like Sweat it's out of print and getting harder to find. Also like Sweat, it goes deeper into sauna background, health and history. But primarily it provides good solid information on how to build a sauna. It's remains one of the better books for DIY sauna building. This book was indispensable when my brother and I built our backwoods wood-fired sauna in the 1990s in Alaska.