Sweat Lodge

I spent this past Sunday in the woods, beside a wide mountain stream and endless evergreens, preparing for, participating in and then breaking down a traditional Native American sweatlodge.

With that last Noreaster dumping another foot of snow in Vermont and then melting within a week's time, spring came so suddenly I hardly noticed it happening. But walking the long ridge of a trail into the woods toward the lodge, my boots crunching on old, cracking leaves and brand new shoots of grass, I was reminded of a memory from many years ago.

There's a place in Dushore, Pennsylvania called the Haystacks. It's a part of the Appalachian trail where the boulders in the water are so large that at night, under a moonlit sky, they look like bales of hay.... the tall round kind you see mid-summer after the second cut of summer grass. There are little round caverns in those rocks under the water that are carved by thousands of years of current and you can swim into them and look out at the sun's rays streaking down into the river. The fish come and swim around your toes and nibble on your skin. The ferns are long and ancient. It's a holy kind of place.

To get to the campsites down by the water, you have to walk nearly two miles on a dug up old railroad bed through the woods. Walking that trail a long time ago in early spring with a good friend, lover at the time, I remember thinking and saying that "this is the way the world smells". Remove the emmissions of deisel, population and plain old crap that lingers around us in the atmosphere and we're left with the smell of those composting leaves and thawing earth. The smell of bark and pine needles being warmed again by the sun. The smell of water running and the sweetness of the dirt it permeates at it's banks. The smell of animals coming out of hibernation.

The lodge was led by a shaman who came down from Canada with a firekeeper. Louise, the shaman, led us through each stage of the lodge, physically, emotionally and spiritually, while the firekeeper was resonsible for heating and delivering the stones. We each came with two pouches of tobacco, one of which was given to the firekeeper and one which was given to the shaman. When someone within was struggling and needed support, the shaman, Louise, would call out to the firekeeper, in French.... "TABAC!"..... and he would sprinkle some onto the fire, onto the stones, which were called Grandmothers.

The frame for the lodge was built when we arrived but it was our responsibilty, the eight women I was sharing this with, to line the floor of the inner circle with hemlock and cedar, to dig the pit in which the rocks would be placed and to create, with the dug up earth, a mound shaped like a turtle that would face the water and the heating rocks. We then laid blankets, tarps and skins on top of the lodge, leaving a doorway facing East through which to enter and exit, always in the same direction.

This was my first time participating in a sweat lodge. I had no idea what to expect. Before we started I kept sneaking off to pee behind an uprooted tree, afraid that my bladder would interupt the experience. Little did I know that whatever fluid my body contained would come pouring through my skin. My bladder would be left wondering what the hell happened!

The ritual is performed in four parts, one for each direction. After the first round we filed out of the lodge to breathe cooler air, splash off in the stream and just be. I took my breath by the bank of the stream where I watched the water roll over the rocks, the light collecting in it's folds and I knew that once I re-entered that lodge, things would change. And they did.

After the second round, we crawled, practically on all fours, needing a hand out of the lodge. In the lodge, between drooling and sweating and generally existing as t.v. fuzz for the better part of an hour, I hardly knew who I was... which, in light of how heavy life can be sometimes, was surprisingly refreshing. I cried, I shook, I felt at times like a wet dishcloth. I tapped into things long forgotten, soaked up the scent of resins and sage and cedar igniting in little bursts of red, dancing light off of the rocks. I rode the crescendo of Louise's singing over landscapes that came into full view for being in such a confined space. The lodge did indeed become a womb and the heat and the steam and the pulse became the very heartbeat of the experience. Louise was our trustworthy umbilical cord, rooting us to the Earth and to our hearts and to our flight.

Between the third and fourth rounds we remained inside the lodge, with the wool blanket door flapped open. Most of us, at this point, were lying on our backs, knees in the air, skirts falling around our hips, soaking wet, wondering how we could possibly stand one more round. But we did... and with grace. That last round, surprisingly, was the easiest. I don't know if it was because I had already come so far or because I knew it was drawing to a close. At this point, my liver was cramping and my body still shaking but I was able to draw my body closer to the rocks, instead of wanting to shimmy away from their heat. I was finally able to perceive them as guardians, as grandmothers, and to understand that all of these epiphanies, all of this shedding of old skin and old perception was a direct result of the rocks' hard work. Like any dirty job, whether it's hanging sheetrock or conquering our worst monsters, it's only when we move closer into it, put ourselves into the task, press our noses right up to those ruby red stones, that we start to see the results of our labour.

There was an old, toothless Abanaki man there named Burton Spotted Eagle and he joined us in the lodge with the firekeeper after the sweat was over and led a pipe ceremony. It was quiet, reverant work as we filed out and started unrobing the lodge and dismantling it, scattering the small saplings through the woods. Two fly fisherman arrived downstream and their casual voices carried loudly on the water. They weren't there for long. I'm sure our meditative scene tucked into the spring woods might have scared them away.... what with about a dozen soaking wet people working silently around a fire with elk and deer skins piled high by the waterside. Not something you stumble across every day in the Vermont woods.

What I came away with from that day will be in my heart forever. There are little pockets of it I've recalled in the days since and I have a feeling that they'll continue to resurface as time progresses.... in perfect timing....like little offerings.