Winter bathing
It is full moon and midnight. The temperature is 12°C below freezing. And I felt like taking a hot bath outdoors.
Over a year ago I got an old bathtub for free. I installed it on top of stones, standing in my yard. Since the tub is made of metal, it is possible to heat the water by burning fire under the tub.
I spent about an hour in the bath, wathcing the sky and enjoying a shot of dark caribbean rum. The world was calm and silent, all I could hear was comforting sounds of the fire, and my horses eating hay. I chanted some ancient songs, and saw a shooting star. It was the biggest I have ever seen, very bright one. What to say? I might not have that much money, but my spirit is free and the world feels slightly magical.
I even tried to take a picture, but my camera isn't very well suited for night photography. The steam rising from the bath makes the picture even more blurry.
bathing outdoors in the winter
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Comments
Nice atmosphere, cheers to you.
:( wish I could do that here... unfortunately I would either be (A) committed to the closest mental hospital or (B) be arrested for arson or (C) have a gang of rednecks camping next to me waiting for the feast to begin.
I grew up in a small village in Eastern Finland. As a teenager I felt that if I do anything different the people will just label me as lunatic... Now I'm happy to have my freedom. My neighbours are great, they know that I'm a nice and helpful person and accept me the way I am.
And it helps that my yard is surrounded by forest from all sides, so the dear neighbours don't get to see all of my experiments =)
lol @ "gang of rednecks camping next to me waiting for the feast to begin". I know the feeling!
Yeah me too! I live in the state of Michigan in the middle of nowhere. Sounds good, right? Nope. It is not. Not that I don't like the wilderness, I do. But apparently people from the city all want to live around this area and treat us who've lived here our whole lives like we are savages. Building these tall fences (like we don't know how to climb a fence) to try to defend themselves.
Oh, yeah, sometimes people are so depressing... Rock on everybody, let's do it our way and maybe someday the other people will learn to accept and to respect everybody as they are.
I would have thought that the bottom of the tub would have got too hot and have burned your ass off! Great idea by the way!
In the summertime it was possible to just let the fire go out and wait for the tub to cool down a bit. I admit that for this winter I've solved the problem by using a small piece of plastic foam mattress to sit on.
I wish I had that much privacy in my yard, but the neighbors are too close. Be careful that you don't fall asleep in the bathtub, or you'll be "cooked" :)
Hehe, my friend Andy has a bath-tub like this set in a small, rocky cleft next to his tree-house which is secured on the cliff and the ash tree growing out of it. It takes a long time to heat up, though!
Thumbs up to Andy! I also thought that it would take a long time to heat up a tubfull of water. But with a decent fire it is surprisingly fast, even in the wintertime.
By the looks of it you were able to built a bigger fire, Sadly there wasn't much room or draught in Andy's rock-cleft, last time I was in touch with him he was cutting a flu-channel with a pick-axe to improve the air flow!
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