Harbin Hot Springs: Summer of Love, Everyday (Solstice Write-Off Entry)
Written: Jun 21 '01 (Updated Jun 21 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Sybaritic pleasures, beautiful grounds, a world removed from modern urban life.
Cons: The cons are like, mellow.
The Bottom Line: If you can set aside your cynicism, what's not to like about soaking in warm water for days at a time?
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| amycamus's Full Review: California |
There's a zen koan, or if not, there probably should be, about relinquishing the giving of advice and (not being a zen master I can only risk a guess) teaching obliquely, by example. The wording of the several categories in which I nearly posted this essay - i.e. what advice would you give regarding choosing a spa or hot tub? - pretty much shows on which side of the Bodhi tree Epinions' golden apple falls. So instead, I've eschewed those categories and opted for the gapingly inclusive and zen-like category of 'California'; nevertheless, I have, I think, a perhaps instructive story to tell.
I do not much enjoy the closing in of early darkness in the winter, especially since my work is such that I leave before light and return long after darkness has settled. The long days of early and mid June are thus among my favorites of the year, at least when the San Francisco fog cooperates and stays off shore, where it belongs. I love to walk out in the evening when the light stays up late, and darkness doesn't fall until well after 9 p.m. In the Bay Area, light itself is cause for celebration, what with the sun reflecting off that giant mirror called the Pacific Ocean and throwing its rays back up into the air, so full of fine ocean mist that it seems to be itself luminescent. Walt Whitman wrote that to him every hour of the light and dark was a miracle; I heartily agree, but echoing Margo Channing in 'All About Eve' I'd add, without the cattiness, "Except SOME hours." SOME hours, like these rare limpid lucid evenings in June, are beyond miraculous.
Because of this appreciation for the lengthening days, I found myself a few years ago beginning to pay attention to the summer solstice, that day when the seasonal odometer turns over and starts running backwards. "Solstice" is a word that elicits one of two reactions in Northern Californians. The first, generally speaking, is a cynical sigh. The second is major party planning. Even with my newfound observation of the solstice, my reaction has usually been the former. After all, I lived in Santa Cruz, California, for three years, one of the geographical poles of the new age world, home to what film critic Vito Russo once called "a kind of benevolent fascism." In other words, I was up to my seventh chakra in solstice, chai tea, tofu, tie-dye, hot tubs, meditation, and a seemingly ubiquitous and rigid belief that all the world's products could be made, and all the world's problems solved, by the various uses of hemp.
But wait! It's June, 1999. I've been invited by a friend to spend four long pre-solstice days north of San Francisco. My friend has taken the liberty of booking a room at Harbin Hot Springs, a spa resort he's heard about from an acquaintance, and as "spa" is not a word anathema to either of us, I'm game. Four days of soaking in hot springs doesn't sound at all like a bad idea, and Harbin, it turns out, is just over the hill from the tony vineyard estates of Napa County in adjacent Lake County (one of California's poorest, incidentally). We take off from San Francisco on Thursday around lunchtime, meander slowly up through Napa, and arrive at Harbin in late afternoon. At the turn off sign on the main road, we wind up a long dirt road until we come to a parking area, which we pull into and stop.
A penis walks by the car. I mean, it's attached to a man, but from passenger seat level that's the first thing I see. I look up and he (the man) waves a friendly hello, an immediate way of announcing that Harbin Hot Springs is a clothing optional resort, except in a few places like the restaurant and snack bar. But pretty much everyone we see over the next four days has chosen the non-clothing option. We check in at the office, get our room key and a list of rules, and a brief pep talk about the property. As with nearly every new age-style enterprise I've encountered, I can't help but notice that the office seems in utter confusion about something, someone's lost reservation or something of the sort. We walk up the hill past lots of flesh. The lodge we're in is an old and attractive wooden structure, and our room is on the top floor, closest to the pools. As hotel rooms go, it's quite pleasant, with a refreshing absence of television. I open the window and look out over the spa area below, a constellation of pools and decks and greenery washed over by a sea of nudity. I then get changed - or rather, naked - and head downstairs, shyly covered by a towel, to join in. Like many people (other than Harbin regulars, I suppose) I'm a bit body-conscious, and it takes me awhile to ease into this scene. Four days of this, however, and I become a mere shell of my former modest self.
Everything about the place expresses a Northern California rusticity, circa 1967. There are the several lodge buildings, with long, veranda-style balconies, a restaurant, a snack bar, meeting and massage rooms, grassy areas, a tent for vendors of tie-dye clothing and incense and the like, and then, nestled above this on the hillside, the springs themselves. These are quite well-developed. In addition to a large swimming pool with poolside snack bar and large sunning deck, there's a heart-shaped wading pool, a large communal pool, a hot plunge inside a stone structure next to the communal pool, and behind that, up steps and surrounded by woods, a cold plunge.
The pools are awfully pleasant. The large warm "community" pool is partially overhung by maybe the largest and certainly the most beautiful fig tree I've ever seen. At one end of this pool is the stone building housing the hot plunge, a small pool with nearly unbearably hot water. One eases into this carefully, and sometimes unsuccessfully; it's extremely hot. The light inside - from sunlight through colored glass - is quite intimate and soothing, as is the sound of water falling from an outlet on the wall into the pool. Up some stone steps behind this structure is the cold plunge, surrounded by the woods, and looked over by a statue of a Chinese goddess. I find this to be among the most pleasant areas of the whole resort, a pool out in the woods, quieter, and because cold, somehow more refreshing than the other pools. I make a whole day of moving from pool to pool to pool in cycles - paradise.
Once I've grown accustomed to the nudity - it really doesn't take long - I notice that the new age element is not merely strong at Harbin, it's overwhelming. It is impossible to tune into any conversation without hearing words like "rebirthing," "consciousness," spiritual awakening," etc. As my friend points out, there's a timeless quality to Harbin, as though something in the clockworks got jammed during the '60's. It's so overwhelming that I have no doubt that I'll be accused of making up some of what follows; I only wish I could be so inventive.
Harbin is known for watsu, a kind of water massage apparently started at Harbin. This largely involves one's being cradled in water by a masseuse, who slowly swings one around in the communal pool while performing massage. The first time I witness a session I'm a bit disturbed. There's a leathery older guy with a ponytail, a kind of guy I come to recognize easily at Harbin over the next few days since there seem to be so many of them. They're in their mid to late 50's, almost all have ponytails, and they constantly engage solo women in the pool and converse about their various new age experiences, rebirthings, higher states of consciousness, etc. However high their consciousnessi may have risen, they seem to have retained a vestigial, amphibian sleaziness. One of them is now getting watsu (a watsu?) from a striking young woman, and he's abandoned himself to the experience entirely. His head is cradled in the crook of her arm, and he's moaning loudly, with his eyes closed, and he's being swung gently around in the pool, which is at the time filled with about 20 other people. I find the sight somewhat creepy. I mean, half an hour before he was paddling from flower to flower trying to pollinate, and now he's enraptured in the arms of some woman a third his age. Open mind, open mind, deep breaths, I tell myself.
I have a much easier time being open with the names. The first person we meet in the pool is a guy whose name is something like "Azstar," and who later admits to having changed his name from an original "Kevin." Nearly everyone at Harbin, certainly the majority of staff members, also seems to have a chosen name. I'm startled one day to actually hear someone being called "Moonflower," since this is a name my Santa Cruz roommates and I would use as a gently mocking rebuke whenever one of us would go overboard with new age excesses. Lying poolside one afternoon, I overhear two staff members conversing. One finally gets up and says, "I gotta go. I'm supposed to meet Star for lunch. " The other, not missing a beat, replies, "Star A or Star B?" The name thing provides to my citified, snobbish, suddenly surprisingly conservative mind endless entertainment (the list of massage practitioners alone is like a Nabokovian poem), but it reaches a peak one morning in the coffee shop. My friend and I have ordered our café lattes and wait with a few other people for an exceptionally stoned young woman to pull herself together to churn out these drinks. One woman waiting with us glances over and makes eye contact. We smile. "Oh the bean, the bean, the bean has us in its thrall." "Uh, yes. Yes it does," we reply. A young guy comes to the counter and orders. The stoned girl asks for his name, so she can call him when his drink is ready. "Gnarlywickedawesome," he replies. Everyone in the room goes silent. "Excuse me?" asks the girl. He speaks again. "My name - it's Gnarlywickedawesome." "Really?" she asks. We're hanging on every word at this point. "Yep. I changed it in a heart ceremony a couple years ago. 'Cause sometimes I'm gnarly, sometimes I'm wicked, and sometimes - I'm just AWESOME!" The girl looks at him in bafflement and wonder. After a pause, she says, her voice like a beach ball bouncing down the steps of the Pyramid of the Moon, "That's really cool!"
It's part of the charm of Harbin, I suppose, but it just never ends. The deck of the swimming pool is a pleasant place to sun - and eavesdrop. A staff member sunning with three other staff members suddenly props herself up on her elbows and looks around. "I'm hungry. I think I'm going to go down and have some Suncheese." "Suncheese?" asks another. "What's that?" "It's cheese, made with sunflower seeds. It tastes just like cheese." I bite my tongue harder than I would on a hunk of said Suncheese, products like this having been a constant annoyance during my years of living in Santa Cruz with my new age faithful roommates. "Hmm," says the questioner, "I think I'll go down and have some Suncheese too." Their next companion, intently listening, says, "I think I'll go down and have some Suncheese too." And the fourth chimes in, word for word, "I think I'll go down and have some Suncheese too." So they all wander off to have some Suncheese. Too.
Even in paradise a few rules must come into play. The community pool has strict noise restrictions, and more than once I see people conversing quietly who are shushed by others. At one point, while I'm whispering to my friend, a guy paddles over and very condescendingly whispers, "Excuse me, guys, I respect your communications, but please honor the silence." He then makes a praying hands gesture, bows his head, and paddles away.
The most prevalently posted restriction is that regarding sexual activity. Signs warn visitors that no sexual activity of any kind will be tolerated in the pools; this dictum, however, is largely ignored. The gay men I know who come to Harbin come with the expectation that they'll get laid. From what I've seen, so do the straight men. I'm not sure how many women come for that reason, but certainly plenty of them could easily succeed, if that's what they're here for. In four days rarely an hour passes when I don't look over and see someone engaging in some loosely defined and sometimes not so loosely defined sexual activity in the community pool - quietly, unobtrusively, furtively even, but definitely getting it on. One afternoon an older lesbian with her partner happens to glance over at a straight couple who've been going at it for about half an hour without attracting her attention, and she exclaims in horror, and to everyone's embarrassment, "WHAT are you DOING?!?" Any single woman in the pool doesn't remain alone for long. Men swim up and start conversations. I see at least five couples come together this way over the weekend, and many, many more rejections. Most of the time the sexual element hovers almost imperceptibly in the background, especially if one invokes a kind of willful obliviousness to it. But there is, at times, an intensely sexual atmosphere, one I find not so much bothersome as, well, tremendously frustrating.
That aside, I'm having a good time. It's like permanent solstice - the longest day of the year, all the time (the pools are open 24 hours, by the way). It's enormously pleasant to wake up, wander down and have breakfast, get into the pools and cycle through them half the day, have lunch, get back in the pools, take a nap, get back in the pools, go to dinner, get back in the pools, wake up in the middle of the night and get in the pools until sleepy. The grounds are lovely, and people are friendly. Besides, everyone seems happy, and they probably are (especially given that they're most certainly having more sex than I am).
Coming out of the snack bar one morning, I see that there's an "owl moon ceremony" on the calendar. My cynicism (fed no doubt by my trying to intellectualize a plainly non-intellectual experience and by the afore-mentioned frustration) hits an all time high. I suddenly find it all hilarious, the sincerity of it all nearly unbearable. What does it have to do with the world? Why does this supposed embracing of the divine and spiritual have to come in such seemingly kitsch, non traditional but nonetheless institutionalized forms, admixtures of various religious practices and hippie spaced-outtedness? I'm not a person who disbelieves in the divine or the mystical - far from it; however, I tend to have such experiences in the most unlikely places, driving a car alone across the desert or staring into a stranger's eyes or having a particularly luscious strawberry or lying in a motel bed watching Johnny Carson (where have you gone? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you) or just walking down a street in one or another city - every hour of the light and dark a miracle. The channeling of such experiences through sweat lodges and heart ceremonies and owl moon celebrations hopefully does nothing to cheapen or diminish one's ability to recognize the divine just barely hiding in all sorts of places. But really, for all I know, perhaps Azstar and Moonflower and Star A and B and everyone else find these same holy glories in the mundane without always relying on the new age institutions; after all, for all I know, an owl moon ceremony might just be icing on the cake. I certainly hope so, anyway. I'm reminded of something the novelist Toni Morrison said in response to a question about whether kids who spoke "Black English" should learn standard English. She didn't answer the question directly, but rather talked about all the different kinds of English at use in the world - business English, legal English, street English, academic English, etc. - and concluded by saying that "anyone who knows only standard English in this world is at a severe disadvantage." There's a message in there, I think, that might just as easily be applied to "spirituality."
Anyway, my reactionism at Harbin should not suggest that the place isn't pleasant; it is more than pleasant. I find myself merely hoping that I can use that out-of-fashion tool, the dialectic, to pose against the thesis of my cynicism the antithesis of the sincerity of the Harbinites, and come up with a synthesis that'll help clear my occluded mind, diminish the levels of p*ss and vinegar built up in me from city living and the daily grind. Cynicism, as Sartre or somebody warned us, is bad faith. So when my cynicism rears its head during these golden days at Harbin, I try to call up Carolyn See's delightful novel "Golden Days," the mantra of which is "abundance everywhere!" and which does a nice job of putting cynics like me in our place by suggesting that the holy rosy California optimism that spawns such efforts at love and faith and openness are mildly silly at worst, but might just be the ticket to get us through such crises as minor as Armageddon (it's a terrific novel, by the way - where else but in California could someone write a novel about the positive side of nuclear holocaust?).
Many years ago, my Harbin friend and I stumbled onto an undeveloped hot spring in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where after wading across an icy river, we came to a hillside literally suppurating with steamy natural springs. Over the years, enterprising spring lovers had dug holes in the hillside, constructed pools in which one could submerse oneself with one's head at ground level. We climbed into one. We were alone in this desolate, beautiful place, and watched as the indigo light of a June night faded, and a full moon came up, splashing ghost light across the snow-covered peaks surrounding us. As gnarly, wicked, and awesome as it all was, I was not hungry for Suncheese.
But since experiences like that may not be possible every day, I'll happily return to Harbin, and be grateful that it's there.
For all the practical details on Harbin Hot Springs: http://www.harbin.org/
One practical observation: Lodging is the biggest expense at Harbin; if one camps, or makes a long day visit, Harbin Hot Springs can be quite inexpensive.
This review is part of the Summer Solstice Write-Off hosted by wovengold to celebrate the long days of summer. Please take a few minutes to check out the summer scribblings of art_ana, BeeCharmer, bmcnichol, caspian, eplovejoy, flak-attak, Girl_Goddess, jo.com, jro26, marytara, naphtalia,
Pearman, phineaskc, Social14, wardukeky, windfish and wovengold. Go to http://wovengold.tripod.com/solstice for links to their write-off submissions. Thanks for reading!
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Friends
Best Time to Travel Here: Jun - Aug
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Epinions.com ID:
amycamus
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Location: San Francisco, CA
Reviews written: 13
Trusted by: 38 members
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