YMAA Chapter 5: The Night Sweats

Back in September I wrote about feeling the need for some sort of purification ritual, and thinking that a Sweat Lodge might be just the thing.  (The Vigil, Chapter 2: The End).  Well, ask and ye shall receive.  When I arrived here at the YMAA Retreat Center, I found this awaiting me. This was evidently constructed a year or two ago, during one of the training-work camps held to layout and build the center.  It needed only a couple repairs, and it was ready to go.

Our first attempt was a dry run.  A smokey, lukewarm dry run; a learning experience. The rock pit had not been cleaned thoroughly enough, and though the sweat rocks had not really been sufficiently heated, they did retain just enough heat to smolder the dry leaves left in the pit.  By the time the smoke cleared the rocks had cooled to the point where we were able to get a couple decent steam clouds, but no dry heat in between.

But the next time was the real deal.  I spent several hours digging a decent fire pit, cleaning and lining the rock pit (with some of the sandy clay dug from the fire pit and small rocks) securing the lodge, choosing the sweat rocks, and building a good, strong layered fire that allowed me to heat a good number of rocks to glowing red hot.

The night cooperated nicely, cool, mostly clear and calm, and the lodge worked like a charm.  The atmosphere and energy in a hot, dark sweat lodge are extraordinary, as is expected, and normal conversation gives way to silent contemplation, and sometimes to extraordinary stories.  In this case, given my motivation for conducting (pouring) this sweat in the first place, I told my version of my step-father's story.  The topic then turned, somehow, to the Greeks, and I became sort of an ersatz Homer, telling the stories of Prometheus, Oedipus, and the House of Atreus to a lodge populated with bright young men who knew little or nothing of ancient Greek myths and legends.  Not typical sweat lodge fare perhaps, but felt just right somehow.  It worked out so well that Dr. Yang decided that he would like to try it, so a couple nights later, I repeated the whole preparation process, and we held another, successful, well attended sweat. 


But we still had some learning to do; we had used the wrong sort of rock, a potentially dangerous mistake.  A pile of rocks identified as "the kind you're supposed to use" had been left from the lodge's maiden voyage years before, and The Boys had worked hard to find and supplement that pile with more of the same; some kind of sedimentary rock shot through with viens of quartz. But after only one use, all but two or three of them had become so unstable I could crumble them with my bare hands.  So, after the fact, I did some of my own research, and almost immediately came across this: "Stones that have quartz in them, are from river beds, or have white granite in them are never to be used, for they sometimes explode when they are heated and water is poured on them." So the quartz veined stones so carefully selected and carried up from Salmon Creek were exactly the wrong rocks.  Gotta' appreciate the precision of our error.  And we were fortunate; no injuries from exploding rock chips.  No exploding rocks, actually; they just cracked and crumbled.  But, for future reference:

"The best rocks are those least exposed to weather. Certain quarried rocks are therefore the strongest. Glassy rocks of high quartz or iron content are not recommended. Iron is a fast conductor of heat and when water is poured on, it becomes trapped in a shell of vapor and tends to form beads. Obviously, rocks that produce poisonous gases or offensive odors should not be used.

One of the best rocks is peridotite, a quarried Finnish rock.. Certain North American rocks work as well. Freshly quarried basalt, black and fine grained, from the Cascade and Sierra ranges, is excellent. So is hornblende, found in many parts of this continent. It's a textured rock which has been re-crystalized at a high temperature making it ideal for multiple reheatings. Locations of these types of rocks can be found on geological surveying maps available from any Bureau of Mines or through the Government Printing office in Washington, D.C.

TESTING THE ROCKS: Exploding rocks are dangerous. Perform a simple test to guarantee their safety. Thoroughly heat a sample for two hours or more. Drop it into a pail of cold water, then look for cracks. When the rock is cool, test it further by hitting it with a hammer or against another rock. If the rock cracks or makes a soft grinding sound when rubbed against another rock, discard it and find another source. If it survives you have a safe rock.  A more elaborate test can be made by your local metallurgical laboratory. It costs a few dollars.

What doesn't kill me makes me stronger. Nobody was hurt, and now I know better. I thank the rocks for that.