At the risk of drawing too much attention to a good thing, there is a very modest, no-frills sauna at the gym at Simon’s Rock, located near the pool. It is where, on a recent weekend morning, I found myself surrounded by an eclectic group of people, all in swimwear and all in search of good sweat. You can feel kind of naked in a sauna, even sitting on a towel with your swimsuit on.
I arrived at the sauna after exercising, then showering, which, I believe for sanitary reasons, is required prior to entering. I entered to find two people already inside. One was a man in his 60s wearing swim shorts, a black T-shirt, and bright green crocs. I have seen several pair of these colorful, rubber-like crocs around the gym. Is there an antimicrobial benefit? Or is it just comfort. Crocs are not my thing. But I support his right to wear them.
The other person in the sauna, stretched out lying on her back on the top level—there are two levels—was a stunningly beautiful young woman in a black, two-piece swimsuit. She had long, dark hair and was unusually well tanned. I suspected she had just returned from a tropical vacation. She was not sitting on a towel. The sign outside the sauna stated, “Wear a Suit. Sit on a Towel.” Seemed pretty clear.
But she was beautiful, and certainly quiet, as she had not uttered a peep during the time I had been in there. After a few awkward minutes of silence, I asked the fella next to me if he was a swimmer. He said he was and that he had been “waiting for a lane to open up.” Just then a lane did open up, as we could see through the window that looked out at the pool, and off he dashed. But not before remarking that the metal ladle that was placed on the bench next to the heating unit was useless without a water-filled bucket with which to pour cold water over the heating unit elements to produce steam and get the air hotter in the sauna—it’s a thing, trust me. The bucket, he stated with a tinge of anger, had been “taken away for bad behavior.” Leaving only the ladle. I was perplexed. Why would anyone take the bucket away and leave only the ladle? Had there been some bad behavior involving the bucket? Then the man bolted out towards the pool and quickly jumped into the now-available lane.
Not long after that, the young woman languorously got up, stretched, and departed. And just like that, I was alone. But not for long, as two good-natured, middle-aged ladies soon entered, both wearing floral swimsuits, followed a few minutes later by a guy I knew from the gym, a yoga instructor in his 70s. I had taken his class occasionally, a 50-minute regimen of movements and stretches the gym offered a few mornings a week. I had to stop going to yoga as my vertigo would kick in during the downward dog.
I had known the yoga instructor to be a nice man whom I had seen on occasion selflessly dropping off new sealed jugs of water at the Appalachian Trail entrances on Route 7 south of town for through-hikers. The hikers could take the containers with them or fill their water containers and leave the rest of the water for others, a common practice among hikers and people who like to help them. I had also seen him standing in line as I drove by the People’s Pantry in town. The one located across from the CVS in Great Barrington, in the basement of Saint James Place. He mentioned he had had a woman living in his yard in a tent and went to the pantry occasionally to get food for her. It seemed to me a kind but also tricky thing to navigate.
Then a guy I was vaguely familiar with entered. He had been a soccer player in one of the leagues in town and played occasionally at the soccer field at the college. But for him, that had all come to a halt recently. “The young guys have legs for days,” he commiserated. “And the ground is unforgiving when you take a hard spill. People have to get up in the morning and go to work.” He seemed about 60-years-old. He had had to give up soccer as his knee was giving him trouble. He walked the golf course—the full 18, of course—but that was painful. Probably a meniscus tear. He was seeing an orthopedic guy soon. “Knees can be tricky,” he said.
Then, one of the pool’s lifeguards popped in, a man in his late 30s. Now it has become a fairly large group, requiring us all to shift around in unison on the benches, moving ourselves and our towels closer to each other to accommodate everyone finding a seat. There was a discussion about ticks, particularly the new strain of tick-borne virus that was discovered on Nantucket that affects roughly 70 percent of the island’s inhabitants. It is called the Alpha-gal virus, and it is contracted from the tiny Lone Star Tick, with symptoms like gastric distress, rashes, and swollen lips appearing, especially after eating red meat and dairy. You can learn fascinating things in the oddest of places. Most everyone on Nantucket are vegans now—and by necessity, it seems, not by choice. “Another thing to be afraid of,” one of the floral-bathing-suit-clad ladies mentioned.
Then another fella drops in, a wiry guy with thinning dark hair in his 50s. Fortunately, he squeezes into a seat and promptly sits on his towel. The conversation ebbs and flows, pulsing up after a few occasional periods of silence. Then, not unexpectedly, things turn to the gym and the hope that it will continue in some form with whoever buys the campus. There were some comments expressing hope that the gym (the Kilpatrick Athletic Center) would continue to operate into the new year and well beyond, as it is a great community asset, which many people enthusiastically endorsed. That elicited the beginning of what turned out to be a sort of running commentary from the new guy, asking, “Had anyone had seen the horrible “affordable housing” units going in on Route 41? They were,” he said, “made of inferior materials because they had to sell them cheaply and were going to fall apart in 20 years and why don’t those people who’d want to live there just move up to Pittsfield?” The hair on the back of my legs started to itch against the hot wooden slats of the bench. I thought, I’ll just slowly make my way out of the sauna and to the showers. Not worth a response or even arguing with someone I didn’t know and who clearly doesn’t understand the community of Great Barrington, where most (but not all) people are on the progressive side of things, care about our less fortunate neighbors, and want young people with families to be able to buy homes here for reasonable prices.
After excusing myself, I took a long cold shower and afterwards sat, fatigued, from exercise and fluid depletion, with my head lowered between my knees in front of my locker. My yoga teacher acquaintance happened to walk by, and he stopped to make eye contact with me. When I looked up, he gave me a wink and let me know that after my departure from the sauna, the discussion had gotten worse, and a bit heated. That is when he had also decided to call it quits. We congratulated ourselves on our good fortune, having dodged the twin bullets of elevated stress and spiked cortisol levels.
On my way out of the gym, I fantasized about what I would have “liked” to have said to that outspoken fella before I left the sauna. “Affordable housing is a great way to help our community thrive,” or “You’ve got lots of opinions, maybe you could fix the water issue in Housatonic,” or “Perhaps the town should increase taxes on second-home owners to help pay for a new high school,” which would have undoubtedly elicited a few responses. But alas, they were only fleeting thoughts that gradually disappeared as I made my way to my next stop—lunch at the café at Guidos, where the owner was handing out free mini-donuts.
