Housewarming

Sometimes research is its own reward. One example was Mike's encounter with Cook County resident Erik Simula, who owns some wooded acres up the Arrowhead Trail from Hovland. Erik runs his dog team at Bearskin Lodge on the Gunflint Trail through the winter, and demonstrates birch bark canoe construction at Grand Portage National Monument in the summer. While he has a spot cleared and logs peeled for his log cabin, he currently lives in the building that he currently uses as both sauna and dwelling.

Erik recently departed on a monumental journey: he shoved off from Grand Portage on Earth Day on a circumnavigation of Minnesota's Arrowhead Region in a birch bark canoe. His route includes Lake Superior's North Shore, the St. Louis River, Savannah Portage, upstream the Mississippi, down the Big Fork to the Rainy, and back east along the Border Route to the final big carry around the Pigeon River rapids to complete a thousand-mile paddle (that's a nine-mile hump for a finale). His dog Kitigan, along for the journey, will not be shouldering the canoe. Erik's authenticity and enthusiasm are compelling, and we trust he is grinning his way past the cliffs at Palisade Head and somehow preparing his legs for the first big portage around the steep rapids at Jay Cooke State Park near his hometown of Duluth. Good luck, voyageur!

Snow Shoot

With winter on its heels in Minnesota, Aaron and I rushed up north one last time to capture some images in snowy landscapes. But ice floes were still pounding the ledge rock as we visited a Lake Superior subject, and four foot drifts surrounded the Alex Rouska sauna at the Finland, Minnesota Historical Site.

The most important shot was an attempt to capture the experience of plunging through the ice after sauna into the cold lake. We spent two hours boring with a power auger and sawing by hand through ice to clear a 30"x30" entry, not exactly an Olympic venue. But in just four feet of water above a gravel bed, it was just right for a personal plunge and dunk, and would make for an easy out for the plungers.

But first we had to get four 30-inch-thick chunks of ice out of the hole. (That's 30"x30"x30" for those who are counting, not quite a cubic yard of ice.) That took two long pry bars and a lot of patience. Imagine two mice trying to dislodge ice cubes from a lowball glass with opposing toothpicks to get the proportions. But that was much more fun than the slow march of the handsaw.

Finnish Saunas in the Lake Superior Region

Photographer Aaron Hautala (right) and writer Michael Nordskog (left) are currently gathering material for a book to be published by the University of Minnesota Press in the fall of 2010 about saunas in the Lake Superior region. This sauna book will consider everything from Finnish immigrant saunas dating back to the Civil War era to the latest architectural examples, while telling the stories of sauna use from the distant past to current enjoyment by those who seek the benefits of the relationship between sauna and health.