being there

by heather smith

Warm springs

I WAS FEELING that familiar urge: to go to a hot spring and submerge myself in toasty water. But at the same time, I was feeling ambivalent about my usual destination. A friend of mine summed up my qualms. Oh," she said. "You mean Hard-on Hot Springs."

She had a point. My last visit to Harbin had left me with that exhausted "critical mass of skanky old men" vibe I remember all too well from Burning Man. Harbin has strict rules limiting social contact – nonetheless, hordes of beady eyes swivel to follow the migration of women in and out of the main tub like spectators at a tennis match.

"Go to Orr," my friend said. "Mix it up a little."

So another friend and I phoned in a reservation at Orr Hot Springs, packed up, and headed north. We arrived two and a half hours later in a lush valley filled with yurts and low-slung wood buildings. The leaves on the trees were turning red and yellow. The air tasted like an advertisement for something very, very expensive.

We went to our room (in a tidy WPA-style cabin), stripped, ran down to the hot springs, and raced past the warm "Stargazer pool," filled to capacity with bluish-white bathers draped over one another like anemones in a tide pool. Up ahead was the small tub that fed directly from the hot spring.

We leapt inside. And looked at one another in shock. "This is a hot spring?" my companion whispered. It was official: we'd become hot spring princesses. We lay there, vainly trying to sweat in the 106-degree water, until it became obvious we just weren't going to adapt. Hotter hot springs had spoiled us, turning us into the Veruca Salts of soaking.

We headed to the sauna, vowing not to settle for less than 113 degrees – it was empty, and roughly as hot as a Muni bus on a sunny day. We poured water onto the coals and clambered to the uppermost shelf, waiting for the sweet heat to wrap us in its desiccating embrace.

The heater clicked lackadaisically. The door opened, letting more delicious but very cold air in. "Is everything all right in there?" a staff member asked. "Can you make it hotter?" we chorused, plaintively. He shook his head sweetly, ruefully.

Fortunately, the steam room next door was hot. At least while it was belching steam. In between belches a clammy feeling settled over the small, tiled room, and cold droplets fell on us from the ceiling. After looking around frantically for a way to up steam production, we gave up.

Fine. We would humbly let Orr Hot Springs teach us to love the tepid. We went outside to the (tepid) cold pool and watched the sun set over the valley. It was phenomenally beautiful, like being part of a tiny cog within a giant inspirational poster.

Orr doesn't provide food, but it does have a beautiful, 24-hour kitchen like something out of a country farmhouse. If, of course, that country farmhouse had an industrial-quality 10-burner stove, rows of stainless steel refrigerators, and just about every cooking apparatus one might wish for.

We'd heard the kitchen could get a bit crowded, so we packed especially low-tech food: a cornmeal-crust pizza from Rainbow, some salad fixin's, and beer. A wise choice. Orr, apparently, caters to the foodies. The kitchen was packed with people sipping wine and arranging the ingredients for their organic, fair-trade, locally produced, grass-fed, Dalai Lama-endorsed dinners. A middle-aged couple sawed away at a loaf of artisan bread. Two young hippies hacked at a giant squash.

The doors from the dining room to the kitchen were flanked by two outsider art-esque oil paintings of the hot springs, one depicting Orr in the early 1900s, during its days as a hotel and dance hall for loggers. The sounds of people singing old Leonard Cohen songs, accompanied by acoustic guitar, drifted in. We noticed a box of hand drums beside the piano in the corner.

After dinner had settled, we crept back to the now completely deserted hot springs. In front was a low-slung building covered in peeling paint, its doors now open to reveal a series of closet-like rooms, each housing a giant, claw-foot tub filled to the brim with earthy, mineral-smelling sulfur water.

We experimented, and quickly found that racing back and forth between the hottest, smallest pool and the heart-stoppingly cold shower intended only for hygienic purposes was almost like having access to a proper hot tub and cold plunge.

Maybe it was just that we'd been soaking in sulfur water for four hours, but later, the sheets in our room felt like the platonic ideal of clean sheets. As I drifted off, I realized that the creepy, eyeballed feeling had been entirely absent from the day. My friend was right. Mixing it up was a good thing.

Contact Heather Smith at hr@smithzilla.com.

Trip planner

Orr Hot Springs is open 10 a.m.-10 p.m. year-round. Reserve in advance, even if you're not staying overnight; Orr is small, fills up quickly, and locks the gates once it hits capacity. Day use: $22. Overnight use: $45 for camping, up to $65 for dorms, up to $185 for cabins. Massages are available. Call for directions. (707) 462-6277.