Sauna Fest returns to heat cool Northern Michigan
From staff reports
Long relegated to back yards and backwoods cabins, saunas are enjoying a heyday in northern Michigan. Popup saunas appear at community events, portable saunas are available to rent, and private sauna gatherings transition effortlessly into pot-luck dinners with friends.
Vlad Borza of Sleeping Bear Saunas and Nick Olson of Hearth Sauna—proselytizers of the local sauna movement—co-organized the second annual Michigan Sauna Fest, which takes place in Traverse City’s Clinch Park from Friday, April 10, until Sunday April 12. Sauna Fest will offer participants the chance to enjoy and explore different styles of saunas from around the state and supplement the experience with a cool dip in West Grand Traverse Bay. A social area will include food trucks, vendor tables, fire pits and games, music, lectures, breathwork, and other activities.
Single-session passes are available for purchase and offer 90 minutes of access to all saunas on site. For more information and tickets, visit MichiganSaunaFest.com.
The Sun caught up with Borza to get his read on sauna popularity, what’s new at Sauna Fest this year, spring saunas vs winter saunas, what he does when he’s not sweating in a tiny house, and his vision for a floating sauna on a barge.
Glen Arbor Sun: What got you into saunas? And how do you explain the scorching hot interest in sauna culture in Northern Michigan these days?
Vlad Borza: As many will recognize, Michigan is an unapologetic grandparent to the sauna culture of North America. I would imagine many of us gravitated to sauna for the same reasons that early inhabitants did: to quell winter’s grip on our realities. Perhaps it’s a primal instinct for comfort, but I have always sought to create small, heated spaces. I guess I just never grew out of my fort-building phase. After years of this relationship intensifying through sauna experiences in the UP and anywhere I could get the kick, it turned into an all-encompassing obsession. I began building what would now be called a “mobile sauna” in 2015 to take this experience with me to rivers, beaches, etc. and through that, I met others in the Leelanau with backyard units and a similar nascent passion.
This led me to create the West Michigan Sauna Club that winter, followed by many trips back and forth from Grand Rapids to bask in scantily clad weekend hangs with new friends up here. I made it my mission to eventually move up to the Leelanau, with the intent of building saunas up here.
I was in the early stages of developing a business, when COVID hit. Then it seemed like overnight “sauna” became the new buzz-word. I wondered if it was some embellished Baader-Meinhof phenomenon that I was noticing this increase due to my own intense interest, but sure enough the past few years have proven that the mirror was outward-facing.
Mobile and public/commercial saunas have become a mainstay throughout North America and popularity is surging globally for this ancient form of connection. It’s not some gimmick or a “biohack” that fell from an influencer’s lap, and people are beginning to recognize that for themselves. I suppose I’m not surprised then, that the pulse has returned to the heartbeat that created it.
Sun: What did you learn from the inaugural Sauna Fest last year? What will be different this time around?
Borza: Nick Olson and I spearheaded the first Michigan Sauna Fest against the better recommendations of mostly everyone we consulted. We decided to create this from scratch, with limited prior experience, in few months’ time. We were eager to bring it to life, and had to navigate a lot of legal and logistical novelty regarding permits, ticketing, website design, insurance and so on. Many times we had to convince ourselves to just keep going, and that it would all work out. It was hundreds of hours of excitement paired with uncertainty. We did not have our final permits approved by the Traverse City board until two weeks before the event, and I was weary to sell tickets or even get the word out until we knew with certainty that it was happening. People showed up by the hundreds, on a frigid weekend in February/March and fully embraced the nine mobile saunas gathered at Clinch Park. We were sold out for every session, and it was evident that Michigan had some diehard sauna folk willing to embrace the elements. However, our music and entertainment tent pavilion, along with the food trucks and other free public events were not as well-supported. Weather played a major factor in that—and in our decision to “simplify” and move the event to mid-April this year, in hopes that winter would be less of a hindrance to the social side of the gathering.
Expect more saunas, a centralized social area in the marina parking lot, and some great giveaways—including two brand new sauna stoves from the nation’s oldest sauna stove manufacturer Nippa Sauna Stoves, based right here in Beulah.
Sun: Tell us about spring saunas vs winter saunas? How does the experience differ?
Borza: It seems like this year is waiting to tell us all that answer. Is it done being winter yet? Don’t get me wrong, there is no confusing that most people associate sauna with a winter activity. April was not the preferred month on our poll for dates. We come out of hibernative states, thirsting to move on to the next thing. In most places, that makes sense. Here, in Northern Michigan, winter seems to linger in our bones, even only if the sun dips behind the clouds for what seems like a decade of minutes. Water has resolve, and no one will dare tell Lake Michigan to warm to our standards. So here we are, at the boundary of what we think should happen, and what is. Sauna in the spring is a remembering that transitions in the north take time, and often need a little coaxing, as we all do, into that next phase.
Sun: You’re a caretaker on a remote island in Lake Michigan, right? Yet you’re a fixture around Leelanau County, and show up at all the great events, including Empire Winterfest and Beryl Days. So where do you actually live? (Do you have a doppelganger?)
Borza: That seems to be an existential question these days. I left a career in Grand Rapids as a science teacher in 2019 and moved to Leelanau County in search of a dream. A dream that included finding a home up here, and settling into this land that fascinated me viscerally since looking out over Lake Michigan from its shores. I guess you could say I’m still dreaming, somewhere out there.
The reality is I’ve spent the last seven years sleeping in every quiet nook and side-street from Northport to Frankfort, living out of a 1980s camper, that finally gave out on me this Winter. I have many friends that have taken me in over the years, when the wood-stove could not keep. That’s probably why I’m kind of ‘everywhere’ on my time on the mainland. I suppose that how dreams work—you have to navigate these unknowns and build them into a reality.
Sun: What can you tell us about the barge project? What are your goals for this, and how soon?
Borza: Yup. I bought “The Barge”—and thought that if I did it quietly and unassumingly, without public spectacle, that I could navigate all the politics that came with it. The vision has been to create a floating sauna platform, open to the public, that would allow access to our Great Lakes, even in the winter months. The idea was well-received by local marinas and partners that encouraged moving forward with the plan. We took a massive gamble and had it re-floated, removed the unsightly crane that had dominated its back-story for years, and had it moved to temporary safe location—but I also quickly realized that many here hold onto history as if it is a beacon for the past. The goal to have it dry-docked, inspected, and begin work to ensure its structural integrity and worthiness for a public space has received significant push-back from the boatyards and communities with the power to help. While I want to remain tactful and go at this behind the scenes, it may be time for resurfacing its past, publicly, in order to make a breakthrough. Alternatively, I could solve my housing dilemma and finally have some lakefront property?
