Try Me Spa Moose

The buildings

The Big Moose & the Calf.

Two cedar cabins, built by Teo, six years apart, roughly forty paces from each other along the deck. The site plan below is approximate — the dock always feels longer than it measures.

PIIKKI LAKE gravel drive → parking woodshed Vestibule BIG MOOSE CALF rinsing porch dock & ladder compost (her spot) N

The Big Moose

Built 2019 · 3.8 × 4.6 m interior · three-tier bench · capacity 6 · shared-hours sessions

The original cabin, and the one where most first-time guests start. Eastern white cedar cladding outside, aspen tongue-and-groove on the walls inside (aspen doesn't resin-drip at high temperatures — a lesson from Annika's grandfather, learned twice by Teo). The floor is a removable slat duckboard over a stone base that drains straight to a gravel bed.

The kiuas is a Harmaja-pattern cast-iron stove loaded with forty-six granite cobbles we pulled from the west inlet over three summers. The stones are re-stacked every April. The thermometer reads a little hot by two degrees; we've left the note on the wall but haven't replaced it, because it has a kind of charm.

Materials list: cedar exterior, aspen interior, soapstone hearth surround, birch ladle and bucket (Teo's work), linen bench covers, cast-iron kiuas, granite stones from the lake bed.

The Calf

Built 2022 (twice) · 2.8 × 3.4 m interior · two-tier bench · capacity 4 · private bookings only

Smaller, warmer-feeling, with a single porthole window over the upper bench looking straight at the dock. Teo rebuilt the roof in the summer of 2022 after the first pitch proved too shallow; the current pitch is a respectable 12:12 and sheds snow honestly. The kiuas here is a scaled-down Harmaja pattern with twenty-eight stones.

The Calf has a habit of holding fragrance. A whisk from the previous session lingers faintly the next morning. This is either charming or problematic depending on your feelings about other people's birch. Annika considers it charming.

Materials list: cedar exterior, aspen interior, slate hearth, brass porthole frame (salvaged from a boatyard in Rovaniemi, where Teo's cousin works), hand-planed single-board door, wool robe hooks carved from birch crotch wood.

The Vestibule (changing house)

The shared building between the cabins. Not a sauna — a quiet, warm, dim room with a wood stove of its own.

Eight numbered cubbies, a phone basket (lidded, for the anxious), hooks for wool robes, a cedar bench, and a kettle of whatever Annika has brewed that week. The walls are hung with framed field sketches Teo's mother did in the 1980s of the Piikki Lake shoreline, including a charcoal study of the original Lehto Sauna before it burned (the fire was a stovepipe cleaning gone wrong, 1987, no injuries, much family lore).

This is also where gift sessions are written out. There's a small writing desk with heavy paper, a fountain pen, and a jar of Annika's wax for the envelopes. She'll seal it in front of you if you ask.