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Aug. 13th, 2008 09:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
javacatUnusual weekend; fun overall. I worked until 6:30 AM Fri. night/Sat. AM, which blew my entire Sat. On Sunday, off lap swimming to Novato + some errands. On Monday, Megan took forever to get ready & over to my house to head to the hot springs, so we left 5 hours later than I thought we would, but: daylight ; pretty drive; lots to catch up on; it's all good.
The place is a trip! I thought I had experienced Calif. new age before, but not like this.
First, the pools. Spectacular with or without structures to accommodate water for large numbers of people. There's a wild warm-water waterfall through 2-stories of twisted fig tree roots (like a banyan tree, kind of) that's awesome, and, the coldest and hottest pool are primal. I wonder if several Native Americans tribes shared the spot, or if just one tribe was kicked off the land. Bet it happened early.
I spent the most time in the Olympic-sized cool water lap pool, doing laps and cooling off my skin. It has two adequate lap lanes (it needs wall markers, not just lines on the bottom). Near is it a cold plunge & heart-shaped warm pool (body temp). Then up some stairs to a very large warm pool, also body temp, under fig, maple, bay laurel, and other trees, very pretty. Above that, the ancient + new agey hottest & coldest pools. The hottest is hot-hot-hot inside a little building with a beautiful Mucha-like bronze of a water goddess in a niche. The coldest is outside, up the hill above it, with water piping straight out the mt. into the pool. I refilled my water bottle there after Megan took me there, for lo, I missed the coldest pool until early evening.
I kept my bathing suit on, which, dude, it was around 100 degrees, no breeze, blasting hot sun: it was wonderful to have something evaporative on my bod. Thank god for the trees and shade. There were lots of naked people. Naked people come in two models [eta: most of the time]: they all look the same, and they all look different. One doesn't really look much less stare, but you can't help noticing when there are, like, 100 naked people around. Except for a few people also in the lap pool, I mostly didn't look at or talk to people, which meant not much chatting except with Megan. She was an excellent tour guide. We both had a good time and may be doing this again.
This caught my attention: the personal statements in The Book to Choose Your Massage Therapist seemed like a menu for a rent girl or boy crossed with a personals ad with a dash of new age holy water. It was interesting and a little creepy. If I wanted a massage, I would be there for the quality & type of the body work, not the nurturing relationship and spiritual thoughts of the practitioner. Perhaps this is more important than I realize; I don't get a lot of massages. I wonder who's held in highest regard, what are the various camps and factions, are modalities a dividing lines. I rather enjoy being cranky about at least one thing, so, the floaters & floatees annoyed me a bit. In the neck-deep large warm pool, a floatee trustingly shuts his/her eyes, is cradled in the arms of another (presumably a partner, friend, or Watsu therapist) who steers (er, gently and supportively drifts) the person around the placental-temp pool. Perhaps it feels great to be the floatee, but I wanted them to stop hogging the center of the pool or brushing a floatees' foot against my arm, eep.
The main reason I was there was for the Perseid Meteor Shower. We'd picked out the flattest, most exposed spot we could find, which turned out to be a trampled spot in the middle of a field of star thistles, which stab like cactus, I tell you what. Horrible plant. I've only seen them in Redwood Park in Oakland before, I hope they don't take off like French broom. I switched from Crocs to real shoes fast. Megan and I drifted around in kind of altered states of consciousness by moonlight doing the tour guide thing well into the night. We drifted apart some time later, and I hiked back along the mt. side trail to locate our blue tarp and get some sleep before having to wake at 2:30 for meteors after the moon set. I got all my stuff out there in 1 trip, yay, and got a couple hours of sleep before Megan arrived, and settled in after lots of reportage, trips to the car and door slamming, being yelled by the RV person nearby, and, eventually, redoing all the sleeping bag/bedding to keep her from getting too cold, since she didn't bring an actual sleeping bag. By then, it was after 2:30, so we stayed up watching meteors; I stayed up until around 4, I think. There were a lot of meteors, I didn't try to count them, but scores, like, 40-50. It's dark enough to see the Milky Way, which is my first viewing this year. Somewhat like scuba diving, I'm aware when I see it that there are people in the world who have never seen this wondrously beautiful natural phenomenon that's there all the time if you just look for it. Heh, I was talking about the Milky Way but I'll bet there are even fewer people who've seen meteor showers. Bonus about our field spot: It started to get light around 5:30. I woke up when the birds started to sing, rolled over and went back to sleep expecting the sun to hit and roast us in 30 minutes. It didn't! Woo Hoo! We were in the shadow of the mountain and some tall trees, by lucky fluke! We slept until 8:30 and still the sun didn't hit and roast until 9 AM. YAY!
Good trip. We had fun together and separately, and if we can get our respective acts together, we may do this again. And great meteors! Thank you, remnants of Comet S wift-Tuttle!
The place is a trip! I thought I had experienced Calif. new age before, but not like this.
First, the pools. Spectacular with or without structures to accommodate water for large numbers of people. There's a wild warm-water waterfall through 2-stories of twisted fig tree roots (like a banyan tree, kind of) that's awesome, and, the coldest and hottest pool are primal. I wonder if several Native Americans tribes shared the spot, or if just one tribe was kicked off the land. Bet it happened early.
I spent the most time in the Olympic-sized cool water lap pool, doing laps and cooling off my skin. It has two adequate lap lanes (it needs wall markers, not just lines on the bottom). Near is it a cold plunge & heart-shaped warm pool (body temp). Then up some stairs to a very large warm pool, also body temp, under fig, maple, bay laurel, and other trees, very pretty. Above that, the ancient + new agey hottest & coldest pools. The hottest is hot-hot-hot inside a little building with a beautiful Mucha-like bronze of a water goddess in a niche. The coldest is outside, up the hill above it, with water piping straight out the mt. into the pool. I refilled my water bottle there after Megan took me there, for lo, I missed the coldest pool until early evening.
I kept my bathing suit on, which, dude, it was around 100 degrees, no breeze, blasting hot sun: it was wonderful to have something evaporative on my bod. Thank god for the trees and shade. There were lots of naked people. Naked people come in two models [eta: most of the time]: they all look the same, and they all look different. One doesn't really look much less stare, but you can't help noticing when there are, like, 100 naked people around. Except for a few people also in the lap pool, I mostly didn't look at or talk to people, which meant not much chatting except with Megan. She was an excellent tour guide. We both had a good time and may be doing this again.
This caught my attention: the personal statements in The Book to Choose Your Massage Therapist seemed like a menu for a rent girl or boy crossed with a personals ad with a dash of new age holy water. It was interesting and a little creepy. If I wanted a massage, I would be there for the quality & type of the body work, not the nurturing relationship and spiritual thoughts of the practitioner. Perhaps this is more important than I realize; I don't get a lot of massages. I wonder who's held in highest regard, what are the various camps and factions, are modalities a dividing lines. I rather enjoy being cranky about at least one thing, so, the floaters & floatees annoyed me a bit. In the neck-deep large warm pool, a floatee trustingly shuts his/her eyes, is cradled in the arms of another (presumably a partner, friend, or Watsu therapist) who steers (er, gently and supportively drifts) the person around the placental-temp pool. Perhaps it feels great to be the floatee, but I wanted them to stop hogging the center of the pool or brushing a floatees' foot against my arm, eep.
The main reason I was there was for the Perseid Meteor Shower. We'd picked out the flattest, most exposed spot we could find, which turned out to be a trampled spot in the middle of a field of star thistles, which stab like cactus, I tell you what. Horrible plant. I've only seen them in Redwood Park in Oakland before, I hope they don't take off like French broom. I switched from Crocs to real shoes fast. Megan and I drifted around in kind of altered states of consciousness by moonlight doing the tour guide thing well into the night. We drifted apart some time later, and I hiked back along the mt. side trail to locate our blue tarp and get some sleep before having to wake at 2:30 for meteors after the moon set. I got all my stuff out there in 1 trip, yay, and got a couple hours of sleep before Megan arrived, and settled in after lots of reportage, trips to the car and door slamming, being yelled by the RV person nearby, and, eventually, redoing all the sleeping bag/bedding to keep her from getting too cold, since she didn't bring an actual sleeping bag. By then, it was after 2:30, so we stayed up watching meteors; I stayed up until around 4, I think. There were a lot of meteors, I didn't try to count them, but scores, like, 40-50. It's dark enough to see the Milky Way, which is my first viewing this year. Somewhat like scuba diving, I'm aware when I see it that there are people in the world who have never seen this wondrously beautiful natural phenomenon that's there all the time if you just look for it. Heh, I was talking about the Milky Way but I'll bet there are even fewer people who've seen meteor showers. Bonus about our field spot: It started to get light around 5:30. I woke up when the birds started to sing, rolled over and went back to sleep expecting the sun to hit and roast us in 30 minutes. It didn't! Woo Hoo! We were in the shadow of the mountain and some tall trees, by lucky fluke! We slept until 8:30 and still the sun didn't hit and roast until 9 AM. YAY!
Good trip. We had fun together and separately, and if we can get our respective acts together, we may do this again. And great meteors! Thank you, remnants of Comet S wift-Tuttle!