Steam notes · Ignalina, Utena County
Three hours of firewood for forty minutes of steam, written down each time.
Notes from a wood-fired lakeside pirtis in eastern Lithuania: cutting birch vantos in June, heating the stove, the ice hole, and bench manners.
- The room
- Grey log walls, two benches, one window
- The stove
- Wood-fired, field stones over the firebox
- The water
- A lake thirty metres down the slope
- Kept by
- One person, Ignalina, since 2023
What is written down so far
Five long notes, each one started on a card by the door and finished at the kitchen table a week or two later, with the timings left exactly as they were measured.
- An evening · Jun 2026Three rounds, and the long half hour between themThe shape of an ordinary evening in the pirtis: how long each round runs, why the second one is the good one, and how to tell when to stop adding rounds.
- Winter · Jan 2026Into the lake in February: the hole, the ladder, the walk backKeeping an ice hole open through a Lithuanian winter: measuring the ice, the ladder and rope, how long anybody stays in, and the round that follows.
- Etiquette · May 2025The bench: what is actually rude in a shared pirtisWho runs the steam, where to sit, when to talk and when not to, and how to bring somebody new into a small lakeside sauna without spoiling the evening.
- The stove · Oct 2024Three hours to first steam: heating a cold lakeside pirtisHow a wood-fired stove in a log pirtis really warms up: what to burn, what the stones do while the room is still cold, and when to stop feeding the fire.
- Vantos · Jun 2024Cutting and drying birch vantos in the ten good days of JuneWhen to cut a birch whisk in eastern Lithuania, which branches to take, how to bind it, and how to dry it so it still smells of the clearing in March.
The heating log
Six evenings, as they were measured
Outside temperature off the thermometer on the porch post, hours counted from the first match, and the top-bench reading taken at the start of the second round. The bar is that reading, nothing more.
- 9 Nov 2024+2 °C78 °C · 3 h 10Damp walls, alder only, first proper heating of the autumn.
- 28 Dec 2024−6 °C84 °C · 3 h 40Four of us; the hatch stayed shut too long in the second round.
- 15 Feb 2025−17 °C81 °C · 4 h 05Coldest night of the winter. Ice hole reopened with the saw.
- 24 Jun 2025+19 °C88 °C · 2 h 20Short heating, fresh vantos, lake instead of the porch.
- 11 Oct 2025+7 °C80 °C · 3 h 00New stones in the top of the pile; steam sharper than usual.
- 7 Mar 2026−3 °C83 °C · 3 h 15Last ice of the season, thin at the edges, hole closed after.
On the door
Four things that stay pinned up
Birch Steam Notes is one person's record of a wood-fired pirtis on a small lake in the Aukštaitija forests, kept so that a good evening can be repeated and a bad one is not quietly forgotten.
- Heat the room first. The stones are not in a hurry.
- Write the evening on the card before the fire is out.
- Steam is not a competition; leave when it stops being good.
- Nobody goes down to the ice hole alone.