Heart of the sauna

Nothing: what the mind amounts to.

A relief, then, dripping onto pine boards; pine, pine and birch burning on the stove, pine planking inside straight pine logs, adzed and trimmed a hundred years ago and laid true.

Wood, fire, water. Water thrown on hot stone to steam and become instant dry steam heat alchemy: nothing; no thought other than of wood and become elemental. With steamheat, with eyelids calmed, heart slowed, mouth heat-cleansed. No-mind no-thing.

And back to the cottage, barefoot through sleet and ice-stiff grass.