markskor wrote: ↑Thu Nov 03, 2005 1:29 pm
The Sweat Lodge 11/25/2005
It was just a bit off the JMT, deep, crossing paths with this other fellow backpacker - this meeting happening over 20 miles in, on one or another of my many Sierra solo-backpacking adventures. He went by the name “Charon”, skinny and wiry - long, blond…clean but scraggly…wild hair, wearing an ancient leather headband and a welcoming smile. (He announced that he took his name after the ferryman of Hades – or maybe it was after one of the moons of Pluto – I forget exactly – he mentioned them both in passing…). His real name though – after you actually came to know him some - was Tom Plunk. (I do not make this stuff up people.) Where he came from, who knows or cares, but Charon somehow magically appeared at this idyllic lake, way off trail, shod in moccasins, carrying mostly a 5-pound bag of brown rice, as well as some other basic primitive backpacking gear…all contained in an prehistoric external wood-frame backpack. One other thing stands out though, about that first meeting with Charon, besides his hunger, (seeing my rod case, he more than once admitted to hopefully enjoying the taste of a fine trout dinner); he was also toting an enormously large baggie of ultra-pungent, purple-haired, Humboldt stink bud – the kind.
He appeared a real head case but extremely knowledgeable - on any variety of subjects… perky, seemingly competent… mostly coherent anyway - eagle feathers, colored beads, attitude, and all the rest. (Despite all these strange trappings, I liked him immediately.) Now before we go any farther, both you and I must first admit, we have all met Charon’s like before - in one form or another – always along some bucolic back x-country Sierra trail, or near some isolated alpine meadow. He was part self-proclaimed professor, part reborn Shaman, and part space cadet. The Sierra successfully breeds this type, (clones them perhaps?), or maybe it is just that they somehow are magnetically attracted to me… as they always seem to show up at my campsite eventually anyway.
Back to the story…, we both found ourselves, just by coincidence now, late June, early afternoon, at this spectacular but intentionally unnamed Sierra lake, far off any main trail. The lake was one of those rare places where, besides its great fishing, it had two other added benefits. One, because of the relatively “lower” altitude, campfires were still barely just legal there (hint), and two, it was in an area that had an over-abundance of available firewood, freshly downed and lying scattered around. Better not to tell you where this was exactly, other than to say that Hank Johnston’s manual on Yosemite Trout Fishing rates the fishing there as great or better. (Johnson, 16)
Anyway, after the preliminary greetings, laughs, and “subsequents”, both of us sort of wandered apart, went our own ways for a bit, with the immediate intentions of setting up two individual camps – both camps were however, just about a stone’s throw apart from each other. There had also been some mention, along the line earlier, that this upcoming night, because of the great fishing potential – (God, there were boils everywhere – at noon too!), it would be nice if we should/could meet up later and share one common campfire/ trout/ bring-your-own, “potluck” dinner.
After making my camp presentable, setting up my tent, and hanging food bags, I prepared for an historic afternoon of anticipated and hopefully spectacular Sierra fishing. The big Browns were out, holding deep in the outlet current like dark green U-boats, silent but ready, calling out to me, like Sirens. I desperately wanted to meet them as well, as they were my intended contribution to the upcoming evening’s festivities. Charon, now also finished with his camp duties too and just hanging out - lakeside reading, sun baking him even browner (if possible), lying on a smooth slab of glacier-polish. He exhaled healthily on a ridiculously large and seemingly, continuously fresh, hand-rolled fatty, looked at all the abundance of firewood available, and said that while I fished for our dinner, he personally would take care of the arduous chore of making the evening’s campfire arrangements. It seems that Charon did not himself fish. Shaking my head and laughing, my path was headed down to the lake, Eagle Claw four-piece in hand. You could hear him calling out in the distance, “Dude, good luck…and…, Have you ever been in a sweat lodge... gonna make one for us tonight.” (Whatever the hell that was…). This all was soon forgotten; I was going fishing!
A good 3 hours later, hit camp again with a healthy stringer of browns and brooks, a few two-pounders – dinner – more than enough…, only to discover that our man Charon was indeed quite the ambitious back woods builder. While fishing on the far side, deep-dragging Panther Martins and Z-rays, watching wild browns do their tail-walks, our man, Charon, had been busy. On the beach, close to the lake, he had erected a pyre, replete with large logs, deadwood crisscrossed and stacked neatly. On closer inspection, you could see where he inserted many, large, bowling-ball-sized boulders into this large stack. All told, this impressive display showed quite a bit of ingenuity, as it was a good 6 feet high, equally as wide, and it had maybe 15 – 18 boulders interspersed throughout the pile of gnarled pine and cedar.
About 10 yards away from this pile, equi-distant away from the lake, also standing atop the coarse Sierra sand, sat a dome-tent like structure – “the lodge”. He boasted that he made the frame from six green saplings, bent over, twisted, and tied together – all natural; he designed it to be about the size of a good 3-man tent. (It rather looked a little like a Wal-mart special.) Charon covered over the entire structure with scraps of plastic, bark, leaves, and my plastic ground cover as well as his, anything he could find to wrap it up tight. Inside of the “lodge”, a bit off-centered and away from the door, he had painstakingly dug a large hole - about 3 feet across and equally as deep.
Well …we did have that great trout dinner, completed with Ritz crackers, wild onions, and you guessed it…brown rice (go figure!). At just a tick before dusk - “It is now time”, he said, and in one Ohio Blue Tip motion, he fired this whole bonfire thing up. Looking back at it now, that night was a bit nippy and the fire indeed mesmerizing, and so we sat there, next to this hellacious fire, getting completely skunk-fried. While waiting, we contented ourselves, for the next few hours, in fixing the world’s problems, and watching the almost- full but waning moon-rise bounce its ice-blue spot off the high granite walls.
The fire caught, grew, roared, peaked, and then eventually fell back into itself… the wood transferring the last of its life into the rocks. Around 10:30 at night, – maybe a tad later, when the sky was full of stars and the Milky Way a distinctive stripe, he announced with a grin that all was – at last - finally ready. Disappearing into the darkness, he re-emerged quickly - now grasping a large “crutch-like” staff, intending to push a few of the now glowing boulders, out of the fire pit. He rolled them right along … towards the general direction of the pre-dug hole inside of the lodge. There was nothing left to say... followed him and the marked trail - red-hot charcoal shards, glowing, smoking, scattering themselves over the granite as he guided the boulders along.
Tennis shoes and swimming trunks were the order of the day, and we crouched down and stumbled in, then settled ourselves down – sitting on our haunches, Indian style – inside of the newly erected lodge. Finally, after closing the tarp that was the door, Charon – in his true element now - took another healthy toke, and proceeded to pour out this old, well-used, Nalgene water bottle … over the now red-glowing hole.
No doubt about it, Charon’s lodge worked fine…The steam rushed us...the first 2 minutes inside were amazingly intense, and truthfully, about all that anyone could handle comfortably. It did not take anywhere near that long to work up a mighty sweat. The temperature got so searing you were forced to breathe through a wet towel, and you could not open your eyes inside the lodge due to the scalding piercing steam. Each time, right after the pour, you waited to feel that rush of steam, waves of vapor - coming at you - immediately - violently… and indeed the sweat did flow. When inside the lodge got too hot to bear, we bailed out – quickly running into the nearby lake, diving in, cooling off, and then back to the fire area to warm up again and re-load.
We repeated this ordeal many times that night, over and over again, mixed heavily with my Grand Mariner (as I always carry something along too - you have to be civilized.), his Humboldt stink bud, and Wyler’s lemonade – the big three! The lodge remained open until the last of the rock’s glow died out…maybe 2 hours later. The next morning we dismantled the lodge, policed the area, and made sure that no trace was evident of the proceeding night’s adventure…now only the memory remained…as it should always be - in the Sierra.
Another solo hike adventure … by markskor
References Cited:
Yosemite Trout Fishing, Johnston, H. (1985), Flying Spur Press
Tight lines to him!