Sweat Lodge
I was invited to a sweat lodge ceremony and it was not something that I wanted to miss. In fact, I had been wanting to experience this for a number of years.
The director of the holistic health clinic where I teach yoga, who is a friend of my boyfriend’s, knows a guy who tends the fire for these ceremonies. We went to this lady’s place in north Boulder. Chris came; we were to arrive no later than 10 am. on the winter solstice. Newcomers, I did not want to be late, and we were almost the first to arrive. Tony, the youngish fire tender, put us to work, clearing away the snow and the leaves from the round lodge and the circular altar with shovels and brushes.
It was barely zero degrees outside, the sun glimmering away like a golden jewel, hanging low in the sky. More people trickled in, bringing bouquets of flowers and pitching in. A couple of dogs sniffed around and played, I met our hosts, and the Mayan Indian who was going to lead the ceremony. Roatia is his name, but I heard “Well-wisher,” which is what he was in effect, and I called him this for the rest of this shortest day that we spent together.
The lodge was made out of a specific number of branches, looped together and tied with purple sashes. It was like a great spider. One by one, we lifted the lava rocks out of the middle, making rows on the outside of tens then four to collect exactly 64 stones. Tony built a wooden platform, upon which we stacked the stones. Roatia provided commentary. The women started the process; women, to whom was given a great honor by the leader of our ceremony, acknowledgment of our creative and destructive powers. The men were deemed the witnesses. The stones, Roatia said, were going to reflect back what we put in them. So, it might be best to leave them blank. However, he guided us to remember all the mothers, and grandmothers. One by one we stacked the lava rocks on the pyre.
The great pile of 64 stones was then wrapped from the south to the east by branches peaking like a teepee. Meanwhile, the alter was decorated by a large staff with a curved end. On this crest paraded a few feathers, below, an abalone shell with a blood red stone, a bowl of fruit: bananas, mangos, blackberries, which slowly froze, flowers, chocolate…
My feet were beginning to freeze in my thin-soled boots on the packed snow. I found a big piece of bark to stand on. I smiled broadly as Roatia caught my presence, and he held my glance, smiling back at me. Where had we met before? he asked. The lodge was covered by great canvases, and they were tucked in snug around the edges.
It was time to light the fire, and the women were given the task by Roatia. We were to ignite it, and the men took over the task of making it big and hot. Smoke wafted from it, as the water heated off the wood. We had a chance to snack and talk together. The fire nice and hot from the front, we alternated roasting our fronts and our backs. The great soft golden retriever Lucky greeted everyone, standing right on the alter and carrying away a flower.
In the freezing air upon the snow the thirteen of us stripped down then when we were given the go-ahead into bathing suits and sarongs, T-shirts/shorts and towels. Shoes off in the lodge, and bring “all the water in the world” to next to the lodge, where it was going to be added to a large wooden bucket. Down to bear feet, women first, we went around from the south to the west. We were smudged by the hostess, brushed down with two great big feathers and we filed into the lodge, one by one, sitting down on our towels in the sand in the lodge. My feet tingled thickly and numbly, I wrapped them in my yellow semi-fuzzy robe, and wondered if it did any good.
The men filed in, Elizabeth sat, Roatia sat, and Tony began to bring in the lava rocks, one by one, one pitch-fork at a time. Roatia held the fork with the glowing red-hot rock, said the first one was for the moon. He commented further, and then place the rock in the pit in the middle. One lady sprinkled juniper on it, and it sparkled like gunpowder. Elizabeth then sprinkled something that seemed to be some kind of golden resin. It melted and went up in smoke, releasing its perfume and blessing. Sometimes it even caught fire, and Roatia would go “mm hm,” and Elizabeth would say “mm hm.” The second rock came in, this time, for the stars, or the sun, or the people. Or the children, for Jeff, for a grandmother, and each time, the juniper and the resin sparkled, smoked and melted.
After ten or so stones went in the pit, Tony brought a bucket of water and some flowers, ditched his shoes, and came into the lodge too. By then, it was getting warm in the lodge from the beaming lava rocks. Tony was huffing and puffing from the exertion and the cold.
When the canvas came down over the small, rounded door, it was pitch black. Roatia said some things, invited us to sing, pray, ask for healing, etc. He began dumping water from the bucket by dipping the flowers. The steam was instantaneous, HOT HOT HOT! I breathed through only my mouth, and joyously letting it envelop me, welcome sweat percolating on my face. My nose started running, it smelled SO GOOD! I huffed and puffed like Roatia and Elizabeth and the others, entering in to the chants and the songs, but mostly huffing and puffing and hooting and wooting. Some of us sat in silence in the pitch-blackness, in the sweat-lodge. NOt me, this time. I’ve been to a healing ceremony before, and although prayers and requests for healings were encouraged, I had sat silent. I didn’t waste much time, and I asked, out loud, with my voice, for healing my tummy.
The door opened, and the short little solstice sun greeted us with cool, crisp winter air. Tony went and got more rocks, pitch-fork by pitch-fork, the ladies sprinkled their medecine. Tony got more water, and a fresh collection of sprigs of flowers.
The second round, Roatia said, was for me. Wow. A whole round just for me. I resolved to welcome it, all the extra special attention, because I deserved it, instead of being mortified. Roatia prayed for all the best for me and my belly, because I deserved it. We all deserved the best. After all the rocks were in place, and Tony was seated back in the sweat lodge with us, the canvas came down again and it became pitch-black, and the steam started again as Roatia poured it on the nearly red-hot gleaming rocks with the flowers, and his chanting came on full force, and he reached over and beat me with the flowers, and I was sopping wet. Ashley squeezed my hand from one side, Elizabeth, the woman with the red healing hands, as Roatia said, squeezed my hand from the other.
We did a total of five “doors,” Roatia quite excited at the best positioning of the door, perfectly letting the sun peak in a little lower each time. The last opened up right after the sun disappeared behind the mountains. Glowing red hot like those lava-rocks, we filed out of the hut and replaced our clothes which had been layed out and piled on benches, drifts, and tailgate. As I replaced my layers, my wool hat was one of the first things on, and by the time I zipped up my boots, the ends of my hair were frozed stiff! Roatia, still barefoot and bare-chested, walked by and gave me some chocolate and a big smile. Big smiles all around, as we rejoined by the ends of the big fire, surrounded by love, loved ones, and the setting sun, and a lumbering fire.
I felt as fresh and clear as a daisy, content and calm.
I miss posting in my journal. I have been busy and adjusting to a new routine. What has happened to my me-time? 
I will always remember this day as the day I joined 80k supporters of the delightful opposition, the tremendous outpouring of support for Barack Obama at Denver’s Civic Center Park. I took the light-rail train from my sleepy suburb, and more and more people filled up the train the closer we got to downtown. Obama shirts, button, signs… throngs of people emptied out of the train at the Convention Center to walk to the park. The line to the “entrance” was three blocks long, but it moved quickly, and I took the opportunity to buy the button I wanted from one of the guys with the button-boards, who walked along with me (backwards) as I held my glove in my teeth, getting a $5 bill for him all while walking with the line moving towards the Capitol Building and the adjacent park. Usually it is just filled with street folks and drug-dealers, the occasional library-going pedestrian… but today it was like the LOVE PARADE in Berlin! (sort of.) I climbed up a crab-apple tree to see the little ants that spoke at the podium. It was flat and hard to see from the outer stretches. The crowd reached like ocean all the way up Capitol Hill to the Governor’s Mansion up the way. 
We heard from our Democratic Representative Diana Degette, whom I met at a brunch I went to years ago when I was going through a high-point of political activism with my dad as my date. Our democratic senator Ken Salazar spoke a few words, and Mark Udall the “Boulder Liberal” running for Senate on the Democratic ticket, who is also pro-alternate energy, education, and bringing home our troops… And one of my favorites, popular Denver mayor business-man, democrat, micro-brew beer man (formerly a geologist) whom I worked for at the Wynkoop Brewing Company in the late nineties. He was a very nice absentee owner, who made pleasant appearances at the brew-pub now and then again. Later I also worked for him as a temp- addressing his wedding invitations by hand when he was our new mayor, and I went to a city-council/mayor meeting one morning when I interned for the City Councilwoman from my district. Just last Friday night we had a 20th anniversary Wynkoop reunion, and he was there, and hugged me! The nice man stayed until the end of the night when we were all ushered out, goons and all the familiar faces from a fun job I had years ago.
And then Barack Obama said inspiring, and intelligent things. He called for personal responsibility too, which the libertarian part of me likes, and YES! Let’s tweak the system out so that it includes more and more of us. YES, infrastructure, and community effort! I just love being inspired for once. I’m on board!
I thought I should feel grateful to the universe for giving me a push in the direction I’d asked for. I want to transition out of the restaurant business, and into my professional field. I need to do this. I have a year left before I graduate with my Masters of Humanities. Thus far, parental help and student loans have made it possible for me to not have to have a very strict budget. I am a pretty modest person when it comes to spending on day-to-day living. However, soon I will have the hard pragmatics of fixed incomes and an array of expenditures (including student loan payments). There are unavoidable expenses and a limited amount of resources. Or are they unlimited and it just takes tapping into? In light of the present, dire economic state of the United States, it seems that at least at the present, money is tight. It reveals just how dependent we are on each other to spend money. In the restaurant business, I am feeling the squeeze. And just now, my boss decided to change our set-schedule system to more of a weekly lottery of shift assignments. It has thrown a wrench into the benefit I have earned of working there long enough- a steady schedule of Friday and Saturday night wait shifts. Those are the best money nights, and it is the most money for time scenario at the restaurant. Jen, Josh and I, who have had the weekends for years now, have all worked there for at least seven-and-a-half years. But maybe Jen, Josh and I have been monopolizing them long enough. Sure, it would be nice to throw some of those shifts to the other long-timers, but in the mean-time, I’m shorted. I have to do something. I have started to look for a part-time job. Politics, or academics.
N. Lois Turtledove is a graduate student at the University of Colorado at Denver obtaining a Master's Degree in Humanities. She teaches yoga inside and outside the home, and is an apprentice in the ancient therapeutic art of shamanic practice. She understands that the only real enemy is the self, and the Self is the deepest source of nurture. She wishes freedom from suffering for herself and for all sentient beings.