Sweat Lodge
Orcas,San Juan Islands, Washington
One of the things on the agenda for my visit was to help build a sweat lodge with my father. After a little reseach we began the building process, many things fell into place perfectly and we were finish in about 3 days. It was a pleasure to build and many animals stopped by to watch along the way. Here are photographs documenting the process.
The building site before leveling the ground
The main supporting structure
Joining the structure with rope
The rocks arrive from a generous friend
Me laying in the floor over a bed of sand and cutting out for the stone pit.
The first layer of wool blankets from inside.
The site was chosen partially for this beautiful old growth Ceder
Grandfather rocks
The fire to heat the stones
The firepit is slightly off alignment in order to protect the Ceder’s roots.
Protecting the fire
Notice the door gaurdian
To see more photos documenting the building visit the complete gallery here…
Young explorer
Bear bath
The sound
The Northwest forest
Black sheep
Alien fungus
Planted peas in the garden
The exchange
Space art
Hidden mushroom
The San Juan ferry
Brewing a big batch of tea is the first step.
Covered with a hankercheif and brewing.
Here you can see the new Kombucha culture growing. The culture is called a SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast) it is not technically a mushroom as many people refer to it.
We keep two jars going at the house.
A close up of the mother culture.
Once the tea has gone through it’s fermenation period of 8-10 days (give or take) it is then bottle and left at room temperature to carbonate and then refrigerated.
