Christmas Day yesterday was a beauty: warm (49° F high), clear, and still. It inspired two Maine activities that are not considered winter pastimes elsewhere. Here you see a Brooklinite sitting on the porch of a mobile sauna in a visit to Naskeag Harbor yesterday:
She and her partner had engaged in some “cold-water-dipping” in the Harbor’s 39° F waters, popped into the woodstove-heated sauna, and she was cooling down to normal when the image was taken. This is a trailer sauna; mobile saunas also can be bought or rented in panel truck form and heated by wood or propane.
In Great Cove on Christmas day morning, my neighbor was enjoying the weather by rowing his SIC board over still water:
Note that the oars are part of a reverse-geared “RowOnAir” system, which facilitates rowing and enables the rower to see where he’s going, among other things.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on December 25, 2023.)