Trapped and wrapped
The Gathering editors turn up the heat.
by Gathering Editors
Cate:
The first thing that hits us is the smell: hot cedar and damp towels, the kind of scent that says you’re about to sweat within an inch of your life. The second is the silence. Outside, Evanston is cold and gray, but here, inside this small and intimate sauna, everything is fogged over — the walls, the air, even our sense of time. Skin slick with sweat, our SPAC sauna session began.
Summer:
One thought blared in my head: Oh. My. God. My towel is going to fall off.
Seriously, the towels at SPAC are as short as an ankle sock and as thin as a corn tortilla chip. I desperately clutched the paper-like towel to my body, hoping no one would realize my struggle. But as I glanced around the sauna, I noticed that the other girls also shifted uncomfortably. It was our first time really getting to know each other: Cate is a fourth-year, Shin-yi is a second-year and I am a first-year. Our awkwardness could have subdued connection.
But as time progressed, small talk devolved into life aspirations and wide-eyed dreams. Cate reflected on her last few months at NU; Fall Quarter is the last time she’ll take classes on campus. A bittersweet feeling mixed with the heat of the capsule — and we tasted it. Shin-yi expressed her own lingering uncertainty with the future. And when I heard them share their stories, I, too, felt inclined to voice my own. A bundle of nerves, anticipation and classic emotional turbulence of a college freshman came tumbling out of my mouth. It was liberating.
Shin-yi:
I looked back and forth between Summer and Cate, listening to their conversation. I added my worries about finding a job post-grad and how to make my time at NU as rewarding as possible. Hearing how we were all uncertain about the future was strangely comforting, knowing we were all in the same boat.
Eventually, the heat became too much to bear and we ventured back outside, the cool air a reprieve from the thick warmth of the sauna. Back at the lockers, we laughed at how red our faces had become; I could feel sweat droplets beading down my face and hair clinging to my neck. In the moments we shared, we detached ourselves from the usual gravity of our upcoming midterms and homework assignments, just drifting for a while in a tranquil, meditative atmosphere. We left SPAC, rejuvenated from our time together.
Joseph:
I got gendered out of the sauna trip.
Somewhere between the jokes about “sweating out midterm stress” and the dizzy laughter that came when the heat got too real, the sauna turned unexpectedly intimate.
Often, people look up to the stars to interpret their dreams, tracing constellations for meaning. The capsule of fog became our small, steamy satellite: a place to reflect on what it means to find gravity in each other’s company.