Saunas and Spirits in Eastern Lithuania

The door wouldn't open.

I paced like a caged wolf. Why wasn't everyone else reacting this way? How could they stand it? This is what I might imaging Hell feeling like, if I believed in Hell. I continued to scream.

****

The village of Zydkalnis lay down the sand road that slinked along the river, away from the smoke sauna. There were no paved roads for miles, just a few farmhouses and barns hugging the road so tightly you could almost touch them from your car. There was no restaurant or bar here. No streetlights. Just a village that looked the same as it probably did hundreds of years ago and a forest full of wild boar, giant hare, wolf and ancient spirits.

My legs steamed, literally. My head steamed metaphorically. Someone had managed to unlatch the smoke sauna door and I burst out. The crisp air felt like Heaven. I walked slowly down the slope from the smoke sauna and onto the sand road, following it as it followed the river upstream. The only light came from the moon, shaded by fog and cloud. The quiet gurgling stream calmed me. A fish jumped, splashing down in the dark depths of the river. I stop on the bridge, close my eyes for a moment to hear the night forest noises. When I open them I see the wolf. It is looking directly at me, but I can't see its eyes. Somehow the dim light has made the animal a silhouette. Is it real?

The adrenaline returns, but to a much lesser degree. Oddly I'm half-convinced the animal is a spirit. I am strangely rational. Do I stand still? Stare the wolf down? Run the opposite way? I decide I must get back to the relative safety of the smoke sauna up the hill. The wolf stands in my path, but I walk forward, then turn to go past it. The animal moves the other way, down the road toward the village, perhaps deciding I am too big or too confident to go after. I walk back along the river, not looking back, fearful that if I do, the wolf-spirit might change its mind.

I spend the rest of the evening outside the smoke sauna or inside a nearby cabin stoking a woodstove fire,

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