Like a denizen of the polar regions acquiring language to describe all the nuances of snow, I’ve become sensitive to the subtleties of thermal landscapes. The hot springs vary widely in the amount of energy they bring up from middle earth. Some of them, mixing with cold underground streams before they reach the surface, form tepid ponds which promise a cooling respite from the summer heat. Others reach the surface at a popping and crackling boil, a stunningly iridescent blue-green fatal attraction for the unwary. The best of them, from a soaker’s point of view, create pools at temperatures from 104 to 107 degrees.
The greenhouse effect: green grass and steam-born dew on a desert morning.
The history of a
hot spring is measured in geological time. Its genesis may have been
a slipping of tectonic plates a thousand generations ago. Its demise,
when the earth moves again, may be a thousand generations in the future.
The natural path made by a hot spring is a meandering stream following
the contours of the landscape. Most, however, have been altered at some
time in history or prehistory to provide a deeper pool, a comfortable
spot for human beings to enjoy a soak in the warm waters.
Perhaps a tribe of aboriginal Nevadans used rock tools to loosen the
soil and carried away the dirt in woven baskets. The basins they created,
some lined with stones by passing emigrants in the 1860’s, are
the pools we use today. A few of them are on land privately owned, kept
clean and stocked with bath house amenities to justify an admission
charge. Those of us soaking sybarites who prefer the all-natural (or
au natural) springs refer to the clientele of these commercial springs
as “beach balls.”