(116): Building a Sweat Lodge in Middle of Nowhere, Alabama

Even in the darkest, blackest, deep Southern night, there is some light. I learned this as I blundered my way along through thick woods on a friend’s property, looking for willow branches. The method I used was to find a switch and hold it up to the sky. The black shapes of the leaves would show up against the slightly lighter dark grey of the sky, and by this shape and the feel of the wood, I could tell if I had a willow in my hand or not. With three other people doing the exact same thing, it only took us an hour or so to gather enough willow branches to build the sweat lodge.

Then the whole group tore off the non-straight parts of the branches and they went into barrel full of water, where they soaked to allow them to become supple. They were stripped of bark and these long bark strips would be saved to tie the bent branches together to form a half-spherical frame, much like the frame of one of those dome tents with a few variations. The frame was relatively light and could be moved around easily (a bit unwieldy though).

The ends were anchored into the ground and black plastic sheeting fastened over the whole thing, except for a small, low door, facing East. A short way outside, maybe 8 feet past that door is the fire on which the rocks for the sweat lodge are heated. After the plastic sheeting is affixed, many blankets are placed over the lodge until it is completely covered. Such a light structure can actually support quite a few blankets.

Inside the lodge, a hole is dug just inside the doorway to the left, which will hold the heated stones. People will enter the lodge and circle around inside it clockwise until everyone is inside. When I participated in this ritual, there were about 10–12 people in all. A couple jugs of water are passed around inside to keep us from suffering dehydration. Slowly, the heated rocks are passed in by the use of tongs (we used deer antlers), and water is poured over the rocks inside, causing the steam to rise. We sang and told stories.

One thing I do remember (this was about 20 years ago) is that no metal can be worn inside. That’s probably wise, since hot metal against skin could easily cause burns. To my memory, we stayed inside about 30–45 minutes, then we made our way down to the river and dowsed ourselves with the cool midsummer waters. There was nothing like it, especially when we were whooping it up in the river while a silent barge passed by. I could hear the bargemen muttering to themselves.

It seems, to my memory, that perhaps we were one of those time-slipped, unheralded stops along Huck Finn’s journey, if he had taken a branch off the Mississippi and steered the raft to the weird side. But don’t worry, folks: no one was harmed in the making of this sweat lodge. Even the newt I dug up was moved to safety!

‘Night y’all!