My friend Ari had been telling me for years about the natural hotspring. "You take a ride up a long dirt road to the river's edge, cross the river by wading across where it's shallow, and then it's just a short hike up some wooden stairs to a wonderful mineral hotspring inside a little cave." It's just about his favorite place in the world, and any place that an atheist calls "holy" must be something special. I was staying with him in Seattle during a weekend confluence of some of my favorite writer weirdos, and had driven up from my home in Oakland.
We called the answering machine at the hotspring, and their assessment of the river was not encouraging. Due to record snowfall, the river was high, and crossing it was not recommended. Still, Ari is athletic and has crossed the river many times, and I'm a strong swimmer, so we thought we'd go take a look and see if we thought we could make it.
Monday was to be the last day of my trip so I could drive back down and make it to the Bay Area in time for my welding class on Tuesday. My new sub-SUV would be a good car for the dirt road to the river. I had a new pair of sneakers. Ari had a pair of scuba gloves and scuba slippers. The long afternoon stretched out before us. The sun does not set in summer Pacific Northwest until like 9:30, we were all set.
The phrase "dirt road" doesn't quite cover it. Mile after mile of a road made of large, loose rocks that would send a jarring thud to the under carriage if maneuvered too quickly interspersed with dirt roads honeycombed with sinkholes is more like it. Oh, and of course, there was the one pond about bumper deep that we had to just ram right through. My Forester was quite the trooper though, and got us to the river's edge without nary a moan nor a flat.
The river seemed very narrow. The other side was in plain view. Less than a short city block away. A piece of cake, as it were. The round rocks of the riverbed looked easy to walk among. The water did indeed look kind of high, but Ari was confident, and I was eager to be a game companion, ready to try.
My sweet god, but it was cold. I declared as much aloud, and Ari pointed out that it was snowmelt water. Not wanting to appear a spoiled fat princess, I steeled myself and stepped deeper and deeper into the water. I now know that hip high is too deep for fording a fast river, but watching Ari walk across smoothly and surely, I just tried to be strong as the force of the water pummeled me. He yelled at me to stand sideways, that the water would flow around me more easily if I did not present my broad front to it. Unfortunately, I'm a big lass, and my sideways is still pretty broad. If anything, it grew harder, for I was not as stable against the current. I wobbled. The sight of the opposite bank telescoped away from me like some dolly shot in a Sam Raimi film. I'd never seen anything that I wanted so badly so hopelessly far away. My legs buckled and I went under to the urgent music of Ari shouting my name.
I'd been river rafting the year before and remembered the advice I'd been given for surviving falling off the raft. Get your feet pointed downstream, keep your head up, breathe when you can, DON'T breathe when you can't, and yell whenever possible to let the other person know that you're all right. Of course, on a rafting trip, everyone has a life vest, but c'est le guerre. I did my best to keep my feet downstream from my head, tried to avoid hitting anything, bellowed like a sea lion whenever I had my head up long enough for two breaths, and finally managed to cling to a rock a couple of pools down. Ari forded down to me. He held onto me reassuringly and then helped me to the other side. My goodness, he's strong. It took all my strength to fail the waters, and he got us both the rest of the way across! I was soaked through and so, so cold, but we'd made it, and after such an ordeal, I really wanted to get warm in the spring.
What a place! The spring is on private property, and the committed and talented hippies who maintain the site love it very much. As I've already pointed out, there's no bridge, so everything here was either carried across or hewn from the fallen trees of the forest on site. There was a wonderful little cabin of hewn logs and beams, hand notched, covered with hand split shakes, and gracefully adorned with sleek, naturally curving branches for banisters. We signed in there, but the caretaker was on patrol, so we hiked up the wood stairs in the side of the hill to the spring.
The Washington forests are gorgeous. Cool little flowers tickled my ankles with their greenery as we climbed: low pale periwinkle, proud, showy, grape-purple foxgloves, tiny wild cyclamen in white and magenta, and the umbrellas of a white Queen-Anne's-lace-like flower. All around us were canes of salmonberries. They weren't thorny, and on each bush were blossoms and all color phases of the berries, yellow, red, and black, looking like soft, plump, Christmas tree ornaments.
"How much farther, Papa Smurf?" I whinged as we climbed the stairs. "Not much farther now, Whiny Smurf!" he cheerfully called back. He lied. It was far. Okay, maybe not, but it felt like it when I was so cold with my muscles all cramped and shaking in tetany. At the top there was a wooden walkway around a vertiginous cliff edge, again lovingly hand made with smoothly curving wooden banisters, that overlooked a breathtaking waterfall. The scent of the heavy water smashing against the rocks was clean and delicious. We stopped at a marvelous little changing cabana to drop our clothes and eat grapes from Ari's backpack. The vertical beams pillaring up the roof had hand carved wooden pegs hammered into them for clothes. There were two other couples there all ready, and we hung our dripping clothes beside theirs.
The little rocky cave that housed the spring had been dammed waist-high at the entrance with river rocks and cement to make a natural hottub. The water spilled over the edge to make a soft little shower on two dish-shaped rock platforms below where one could bathe in a slightly cooler pool. Ari said he thought it was about 104, 105 degrees inside the cave. I thought it was positively luscious degrees. We stayed long enough to melt our cold muscles happily for a while. Ever the mad scientist, Ari played with the acoustics of the cave by playing at Tuvan throat singing. Ari is a wonderful person, and I love him dearly, but he is no Tibetan monk. A voice from outside the cave complained jovially "Hey whatcha got in there, a digery-doo?" --"Cut it out, Ari. You're scaring the straights," I admonished, which got a hearty laugh from the happy nekkid hippies below us.
We sadly realized we'd better hustle out soon though, if we wanted to get out of the forest before daylight, and got into our nasty, dirty, wet, freezing clothes. I gotta say, ain't nothin' less pleasant after a fabulously relaxing hotspring dunk than the feel of icky cold socks as you draw them over your feet, unless of course, it's icky cold panties clinging wetly to your arse under the same circumstances.
Climbing down the stairs was notably nicer than climbing up, and I spent more time gazing up at the regal height of the old growth redwoods around me. Ari told a tale of a Japanese timber company that had offered a million dollars for one of the 900-year-old redwoods, and that the owners had turned them away. I was a bit skeptical that any of the nature lovers dedicated enough to get here would alert a Japanese timber company to the existence of such a tree, but the story made me sigh happily anyway. It's nice to know that something that is supposed to outlive me lives on the property of people who will protect it.
Back at the cabin we met the caretaker who knew Ari from many previous visits. She looked a little forest smudged from her patrol hike, and positively lovely in her barefoot tanned glory. Ari talked over a virtual reality collaboration idea they'd discussed before with her, and I threw little pinecones in the air for her swell border collie to catch. Good dog, Tara!
We went back down to the river's edge. Was it my imagination, or was the water even higher? Ari crossed the river to drop off his backpack, and came back across to help me across. Well, if he could do it twice in a row, how hard could it be, right? I had a staff I'd picked up on the trail, and this time Ari was going to hold onto me the whole way across, surely it would be fine.
The water was higher, over my waist. My leg muscles were not as strong as the first time, wearied by the climb to the spring, relaxed in the spring, shocked and twitchy from putting my cold clothes back on, they started giving out immediately. The water snatched the staff from my hand and it whipped downstream behind me. The dolly shot of the opposite bank telescoped out again, and then started spiraling crazily like the staircase in Hitchcock's Vertigo.
As my legs gave out, Ari pulled me up. I made another three paces clinging to him, and then my weight pulled us both under. He got footing and tried to bear me up. I felt his hand on my chest and then clutching my throat as he tried to grab me. I panicked again, and we were carried down another pool. He suggested we try to stop at a big rock. I couldn't manage to stand against it, and we were off again. We aimed for a huge, curved, jammed log. I almost didn't catch it, but he gripped my arm powerfully and pulled me to. Today there are still four little bruises on my arm that perfectly match his fingertips: a text on my body of exactly where Ari's hand was when he saved my life. We clung to the underside of the log where it arched over the water in the center. I was all weepy and hyperventilating. It was so cold. The far side of the river might as well be Sri Lanka at this point.
I babbled in panic "I want to go back, I want to go back, I want to go back, I can't cross, I want to go backgobackgobackgoback!" Ari soothed me "yes I know, it's scary, we're okay, you're okay, it's scary, but you're fine. Just rest here a minute, and then we'll go back." We ducked under the log and he helped me back to the hotspring side of the river. It felt impossibly difficult to work our way through the rushing water, even at the shallows, but the bank was probably only 20 feet from the log.
I cried helplessly as we walked back to the cabin. I babbled through my tears, "this is a nice place. I could be useful if I stayed here until next month when the river goes down. I can crochet, I can cook, and I can carve. I'd help work on the cabin and the paths. We can send short-wave radio notice to the local police to let my husband know I'm okay..." Ari let me cry companionably, and gently told me it probably wouldn't come to that. He wondered aloud if the caretaker knew an alternate route.
At the cabin one of the other couples was just returning from the spring and chatting with the caretaker. They looked refreshed and relaxed. "My god, are you okay?" asked the woman. We were drenched, muddy, and I was crying jaggedly. "We're fine," Ari reassured them hurriedly, "no cuts, no sprains, no bumps, but the river's gone up, and it's too much for Morrisa to cross, even with my help. Truth be told, I'm not looking forward to crossing again today myself. I've already done it 3.5 times, and the water keeps getting higher."
The man and woman invited us to hike with them to "the logjam." They made it sound as easy as driving Interstate 80: "Yep. A huge natural dam of logs, and all you have to do is just walk across. No wet feet!" No wet feet sounded good to me, so we gratefully followed along, picking our way down a tiny winding path through the dense forest thickets of blackberry and fern. The man gallantly offered me his staff, and we established walking order. He went first to figure out the right trail, the woman went second and gave me advice on the best places to step at the tricky bits, I was third, and Ari came behind me, backing me up, singing me little songs to keep me calm.
We found the right path to the logjam marked by a little piece of cellophane tied to a salmonberry cane "Aha," cried the man, "a marker!" The log highway started well up on the riverbank with a few fallen logs laying right on the earth. I have bad knees, and walking on them didn't look safe. I wanted to walk around them, but the couple told me I had to start using them to practice. Jeezis, I'd never even done balance beam in phys. ed. class in school. I used the staff as a balance pole, just like walking a tightrope in a cartoon. The man talked me across. "Smooth movements, walk in the middle of the log, where it's flat. Just like walking a sidewalk. It's a sidewalk, nothing more. It's a sidewalk." My new mantra. "It's a sidewalk."
The logs lying on flat ground gave way to logs piled on top of other logs, higher off the ground. "It's a sidewalk," I repeated, as I looked nervously off the edge of the log, realizing I was now a good seven feet up. As we walked the log pile, I realized the next log would take me across a little ravine filled loosely with a thorny blackberry bramble. We were at least 12 feet up now, with thorns below us. "It's a sidewalk," I told myself, and focussed on making my movements smooth.
Each log seemed worse than the last. It was like some nightmarish video game with successively more challenging obstacles, but no free lives. One of the logs was angled at a scary downward grade. One log was carpeted thick with moss, and felt much more slippery under my feet than the ones before it. The blackberry bramble gave way to a deep creek ravine, and I could see water and rocks beneath me. One log was so much thinner than the others that I moaned aloud in fear as I balanced across it, all the while listening to Ari and our new friends reassuring me "It's a good log. It's nice and stable. We did it, you're doing fine, you're almost there. It's a sidewalk."
We reached the river proper. The woman told me that she thought I was doing very well, that she could see I was scared, and that I was doing great anyway. She told me she respected me. I remembered what the Wizard said to the Cowardly Lion: "true courage is going on when you're afraid." Hey. Wisdom is where you find it. I mounted the next log, swung myself up, and looked at the fearsome array of new terrors before me, each with rushing rapids below. I sighed, focussed on balancing my staff, and made it over the first log. It would have been nice to not look down, but I had to keep an eye on the river below us, so I'd know where to aim my feet if I fell into the rapids. Log after log, different grades, different widths, different bark textures, I walked them all, listening to the soothing voices of my friends, walking the sidewalk.
The last log came to rest with one end wedged at the top of a short waterfall, and the surface was shiny wet. So close to shore, but it looked slick and scary. I wobbled nervously and grabbed the branch of the log I was on. Everyone reassured me that it just LOOKED slippery, but that the bark still offered plenty of easy footing. I walked the last log, repeating to myself "I'm there, it's already over. These steps are nothing. It's all behind me. I'm walking on the sidewalk," until I was truly finished. I splashed through the last bit of shallows to the bank, and rested for a few minutes with my cohorts.
"There, see? That was easy!" said the man.
"Sure," I repeated dubiously, "it was easy."
"Well, actually, that was really hard. You did a great job. We're really proud of you. Not everyone could do what you just did!"
"Thanks," I said, "couldn't have done it without you. And if you're ever in my neck of the woods, everyone who saves my life gets a night in my guestroom and blueberry pancakes for breakfast! It'll be nice to give YOU something for a change, you helped me so much!"
"Well," he pointed out, "just focussing on getting you across and reassuring you helped us. That was a pretty scary walk for us too, but we were so busy making sure you were okay, We didn't have time to be afraid."
"Heh, glad to be of soivice. I hope I never have to do you a similar favor!"
We still had a very
sheer, slippery clay bank to scale, and the sight of it dismayed me again, but
at that point I could clearly do anything, so I just sighed and started climbing.
We reached the road muddy and tired, but our cars were right in our line of
sight. I let out a huge, exultant Tarzan yell, and my friends laughed around
me. Oh, it's so sweet to be alive, so sweet.
Rant: Ari and I immerse. Slosh!
Copyright © Morrisa Sherman, 1999
This work may not be
reproduced in any form without the author's explicit permission