This past spring I moved into a cabin, in the sense of the term as it is used in Fairbanks. In other words, I moved into a house without running water and joined the community of cabin dwellers scattered throughout the larger Fairbanks populace. Being that this is my first winter in a dry cabin, I'm still largely getting my feet under me when it comes to the niceties that make daily life more efficient and more pleasant. I've been in my current dwelling for a little over a month, so I am also getting my feet under me in this locale during a time of year when everything is that much more difficult because of the extreme cold and the limited hours of daylight. Life in a dry cabin is so far from the suburban and urban life in which I grew up, the life I led before moving to Alaska. And it is so far from the lives of my friends Outside (and even some here in Alaska), I've been feeling inspired to document the interesting, the mundane, the difficult, and the surprisingly not-so-difficult aspects of my days.
I fired up my sauna for the first time two weeks ago, when a friend came over for some wine and a steam. At -10 Fahrenheit, it takes about two hours for the sauna to reach 130 degrees, perfect for a mid-length steam. The sauna is good sized, and the people who built this house and the sauna knew what they were doing. There is a drain in the floor, right next to the wood stove, and a bucket up above. A hose hangs down from the bucket, with a valve that turns the flow of water on and off, allowing for a gravity-fed shower of sorts. The heat from the stove is enough to keep one from feeling the chill of the winter air, despite the cool water trickling down from above. After my friend left, my first steam in my new sauna turned into my first sauna shower. I managed to wash and condition my hair and thoroughly soap up and wash off, using perhaps two gallons of water. It is surprising how clean I felt after the sauna shower, and I was impressed with how little water I had used. I have since fired up the sauna several times. It feels so cleansing to sweat out all of the toxins of the week; and combined with the good conversation of friends, a sauna during the Fairbanks winter can't be beat. I've steamed with friends to bring in Solstice and the New Year and enjoyed a rejuvenating sleep both nights.
I am finding that dry cabin life makes one part of a community to which locals living with running water don't have access. My gravity-fed sauna shower is a big perk of the cabin I live in, but sometimes I don't have two hours to stoke and tend the woodstove and get the sauna warm enough to stand wet and naked while I wash my hair and body. And sometimes, I desire the slightly higher water pressure that plumbing affords. I have joined the gym at the University, which gives me access to two locker rooms and the hot showers that go along with them. My morning routine, perhaps twice a week, includes getting ready for work in the company of perhaps a half-dozen other women. Is this what the great bath houses of ancient Greece and Rome must have been like? Like women in gym locker rooms anywhere, I am sure, we are careful to allow one another a sense of privacy. However one can still get a sense of the collective energy and attitude of the day, before people drink their coffee and put on their public face (and I don't mean in the sense of putting on make up). I've been realising with great interest that there is indeed a collective mood in this town. I wonder is it dictated by how cold the day is and whether the sun is out, whether it is slightly cloudy or Monday?
It is interesting to observe other women's morning routines. On particularly cold days, and perhaps some not-so-particularly-cold days, you can bet that several of the women you see running errands around town or sitting behind computers in their professional office buildings are wearing long underwear beneath their smart (and not-so-smart) business attire. There is something comforting in knowing that I am not the only one who feels like my pants are a little tighter when the thermometer reads -30F in town, that I am not the only one wearing lingerie that makes me feel extra feminine under my distinctly un-sexy woolies.
