Ed Kranz set up his mobile sauna next to a frozen beach at Lebanon Hills Regional Park in Eagan, Minnesota, on a bone-chilling Sunday morning during a weekend cold snap.
Ed and his wife Colleen own Saunable , “a wood-fired sauna experience on wheels.” After about 8 to 12 minutes of sweating in the Kranz’s 185 degrees Fahrenheit (85 degrees Celsius) sauna, a group moseyed outside into a 15-degrees Fahrenheit (9 degrees Celsius) Minnesota afternoon. They sat around a fire in bathing suits to gradually lower their body temperatures before repeating the process three or four more times. One brave soul submerged himself into a hole in the frozen lake for a post-sauna cold plunge.
The group was not alone. As temperatures drop into the teens, Minnesotans are embracing sauna culture for warmth and community. Devotees say the state’s sauna mania is about more than sweat and snow — it is the product of Old World traditions intersecting with newfangled internet-based communities, and a desire for social connection in a society that can feel isolating.