Linda H.Y. Hegland is an award-winning poetry, lyric essay, and non-fiction writer who lives and writes on a small farm in Nova Scotia, Canada. She writes the occasional short story. Born in Bath, England, she grew up on the stark prairies of western Canada, and now returns to coastal/bucolic climes in Nova Scotia. Her writing most often reflects the influence of place, and sense of place, and one’s complex and many-layered relationship with it. She has published in numerous literary and art journals and has had work nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She has had previously published two books of poetry – ‘Bird Slips, Moon Glows’ and ‘White Horses’, a book of lyric essays – ‘Place of the Heart’, and a book of verses and vignettes – ‘Remember in Pieces’. She is currently working on another book of poetry and vignettes to be published in late 2024.

Moon and Sauna Nights

There stands a Finnish sauna on a small farm in the Ottawa Valley. 
It belongs to old, cherished friends. 
It is made of cedar planks and sits under a willow tree, 
its door and roof festooned with fairy lights. 
Carefully and lovingly hand-built;
with a stove as hot as the hinges of hell;
ceramic pitchers with which to pour water over the stones;
a pile of birch branches with which 
to beat the skin on your back. 
And always, 
always,
one or two or more cats piled on the splintered porch of it. 
It has an ante-room where one can disrobe and robe again;
where one can have a swig or two of beer or wine 
between searing douses of steam;
where one can change the tune on the CD player. 

But before this sauna, there was another,
on the prairies,
where these old friends and we lived. 
Vast grasses and huge skies;
constant chirr of grasshoppers;
the cheerful whistle of gophers as they upended themselves into their holes;
the undulation and grey/green colour of the coulees;
hawks screeching in the sky;
antelope walking the curving lines of the river,
grazing on buffalo beans and Saskatoons. 
And on full moon nights, a glowing orb 
that seemed to fill the entire sky.

There, a farmhouse out beyond the edge of town,
with horses and dogs and many, many cats. 
Nearby was a whiskey distillery;
Black Velvet it was called and the air out there 
always had a bit of sour mash funk about it. 
And we always had an air of mild drunk 
about *us* as a result. 
The sauna was built out in a long-grass field 
on the edge of the horse pond. 
From a certain vantage point the sauna looked 
to be the only thing on the horizon for 
miles 
and miles 
around. 

Not much bigger than a shack, on that horizon,
under the keening hawks and 
the red-winged blackbirds singing ‘Okaleee’. 
Just enough room in the sauna for us four adults. 
And sometimes one of my small boys in a plastic baby bath 
filled with cool water that turned warmer and warmer 
and made them sleepy;
remembering a womb. 
When the baby boys were awake and splashing, we would sing 
old rock songs, full-throated. 
As they grew sleepy we would sing 
old folk lullabies.

It had a stove much more wicked 
than the current one in the Ottawa Valley.  
It glowed so red we barely needed the candles 
we used to light the sauna. 
The steam was so hot it clouded our vision. 
The air felt thick and syrupy. 
Close. 
You could feel it surge into your lungs and back out again. 
Saunas are a peaceful, secret place to weep. 
Tears can drip with sweat down 
onto the wet musty floor. 
No one notices. 
No one at all.

Between blasts of skin-peeling heat 
we would run to the nearby horse pond. 
The ground around the pond thick, 
churned mud and slime, 
where the horses came to drink. 
Once in the water, 
the feel of long grasses 
swaying against shins; 
fish nibbling at ribs;
the reflection of the stars in the water like 
the Milky Way had fallen into it. 

On one night, 
full moon, 
and the horses were herding 
close to the sauna, restless - 
could hear their clumping hooves and exaggerated sighs; 
an occasional quiet nicker at the space 
where the door didn’t quite fit the frame. 
Peeking in at us 
through the cloudy glass of the 
one narrow window,
they would snort. 
And made it difficult to leave 
and re-enter the sauna, 
crowding close, 
pulling our wet hair and 
nuzzling our naked shoulders. 

So we hung about outside the sauna to cool, 
not bothering with the pond;
staring up at that gorged and extravagant moon. 
You could see the craters. 
You could imagine you saw the footsteps 
of intrepid spacemen in the dust.

And then,
and then . . . 
we looked out to the field and one of us, there,
sitting astride a horse - 
a spectral light upon a snorting shadow. 
His body glowed silver as a ghost in the moonlight 
and great wafts of steam rose off of him 
like the steam from horses’ nostrils in the winter. 
The horse pawed the ground and tossed his tangled mane.  
And, just for a moment, 
the grasshoppers stopped chirring 
and the moon somewhat wobbled. 
Just for a moment.

There is alovely sauna now, 
that one in the Ottawa Valley, 
with clean lines and amenities. 
It is not a shack at all,
quite civilized. 
But the sauna I love best 
is that one on the prairie; 
that shack on the horizon 
under a gibbous moon;
the one my sons fell to sleep in; 
the one I could weep in; 
the one of horses that throng; 
the one of steaming beings that stop the moon;
with a pond of swaying grasses and curious fish.