Near the entrance of the sweat lodge lies the bone-white skull of a buffalo. Ernest leads us past the skull, and we enter through the flap on the east side of the lodge. We are all wearing swimming trunks or shorts of some sort. You are nearly on your hands and knees as you crawl through the triangular opening into the darkness. We follow Ernest as he shuffles slowly along, hunched, moving clockwise around the ring of bricks. The lodge was not tall enough to walk normally, even for a guy like me who is 5’10” in cowboy boots - now I have bare feet. At what I’d guess to be 6’3” barefoot, Ernest hunches around the fire pit, negotiating the blankets until he takes a seat on the blanket closest to the flapped opening we entered.
Following Ernest in the same clockwise, clocklike motion are Tyson, Ron, and Junior. I am the last one to enter at that time, claiming the blanket two places from the door. It happens to be the blanket I had smoothed upon the earth earlier. That leaves one empty blanket to my right, toward the opening flap. Lorenzo will sit there eventually, but for now, his job is to pick the lava stones out of the fire and place them in the pit in the center of the lodge. With a large pitchfork the big, angular, muscular Oglala lifts each large stone from the fire, carries it with clear but calm physical effort, walks it up the short, steep slope to the lodge, maneuvers it carefully through the opening of the lodge, and places the hot stone gingerly in the center of the brick ring.
Inside the sweat lodge, it is dim, half-light. Outside, the Earth has swallowed the Sun. Only the darkening glow of the cloudless eastern sky fingers through the triangle flap door. Like the lodge itself, the mood is not light, but open. The men talk more than I have heard them all evening. They talk about their families, their struggles, fish they had caught. Sometimes, we laugh. Others, there is a comfortable wordlessness.
The workman's metal clatter, as Lorenzo handles the lava stones with his pitchfork, rattles the quiet. All other sounds and signs of life are absent. You begin to imagine the tips of the pitchfork aglow with the heat of mystery, but there is a clear distinction between imagination and what comes from the earth. After Lorenzo places another stone in the circle, Junior moves it, using a deer antler with four points to form a base.
Now, a stone is placed in the circle close to me. Instantly, I wince at its punch, a good heat, but intensely hot. I resolve that I shall not be backed into the corners of the lodge. I will sit upright, “Indian style,” as we were taught in kindergarten, with no hint of disrespect for the people. It was a good posture we learned in those days. I will stretch my back and lean into the fire, but before I do, I see hanging from the ashwood frame of the lodge the prayer ties Ernest crafted. I see them again now in a different light. Although the fallen sun’s glow is waning, you see the four colors of the prayer ties - red, yellow, black, and white. It takes several minutes for Lorenzo to lift, carry, and place each of the heavy lava rocks into the ring. He sets them carefully into the circle. Junior cajoles each stone with the antler, nestling the large burning masses into a stable pile.
Maybe half of the twenty-four stones has been placed inside the fire pit. The entire lodge is hot. Heat’s jab is long-armed and strong, inescapable within the canvas confines of the ancient lodge. The darkness breaks for a moment. Something changes all of what is inside the lodge. Suddenly, there is no holding back the lightness. The frat-type jokes start and, of course, are repeated. “I think that’s twenty-four,” is heard more than a few times as additional stones are placed in the circle in the center of the lodge. The mood ebbs and flows, yet words gradually crumble into the approaching otherness. At last, Lorenzo places the twenty-fourth hot stone in the ring at the center of the lodge. He announces soberly and simply, “That’s the last one.” Nothing Lorenzo does seems to carry emotion, but you sense some strong force deep within him. The stoic Lakota crawls through the lodge’s door, which he oversees. He lumbers into his place on the blanket beside mine and closes the flap on the other side of him. All of us settle into the strange, dark silence. I have no idea what to expect.
With the canvas flap now closed, all you can see in the sweat lodge are the lava stones emanating a shifting light. You could not discern the brilliant motion of heat glowing simply through bare rock until the lodge door is closed and the blackness is almost total. The great internal heat shifts sinuously through the compact stones, remnants of fire strong enough to display red, orange, yellow, and white colors that meander through black rocks. From the stones, the heat pulses through the lodge's air in a strange, serpentine labyrinth of circulation.
Now, we are in the sweat lodge. I am spun by wonder, but keep my bearings. The glowing stones bring you to center. I sense the comfort of something someone set me looking for long ago. Under the stars, it is more difficult to find center, but you can find them with a little experience and education. In the darkness of the world, when there are no stars to guide us, that is when we are most helpless. Imagine setting aside all the technology and noise. Think of nothing but blackness and silence. Now, it is sometime I do not remember. I am watching the northern lights, and they are creating overwhelming heat.
In the darkness of the ashwood and canvas lodge, I am sweating immediately. How hot was it? I do not have a thermometer or a thought about numbers. I am soon sweating profusely, but never feel uncomfortable or light-headed. Never unclear of mind because of the heat or any element. My mind remains lucid throughout the ceremony, which makes it all the stranger.
I have told you that a friend rightly described the darkness and heat as disorienting. You feel lost to this world somehow. If the sense still escapes you, let me say that it is like skiing through a white-out in the mountains. The intense cold whiteness of the snow swirling around you, the white-covered slope underneath your skis, and the glaring white sun-fused sky, all of which have become one, are here supplanted by the absence of light and intense heat. This heat rises from the lava stones, a movement of lightness and darkness, a haunting fluid orchestral dirge rolling with the rhythm of the universe into a quiet mantra of shifting radiance.
Inside the spectral sweat lodge, you cannot see the man sitting near you or the men across the fire pit. You cannot see the moon you know glows near its fullness in the firmament above the lodge. The thickness of two dark canvas covers conceals all earthly and celestial light. You see only the radiating stones, the heat shifting and shimmering within the stones. Fitful, tremulous like a restless animal.
In the darkness, Ernest begins speaking Lakota in what sounds like prayer. I do not understand what he is saying, but I can sense its power. All of the rest of us remain silent, other than a few utterances in tones of agreement.