Hey y'all,
So how was everybody's Turkey Day?
Mine is happening sans turkey...and the day after I might add. The official day of Thanksgiving was rather boring, but the day before was so epic it hardly mattered.
Eugene, Oregon is a town that loves its hippies and its disaffected, which is a beautiful thing, but it takes a little getting used to.
The oddest characters approach you with the comfortable expectation that they will be received.
My day started out at the coffee house and I was shuffling tarot cards, obsessively asking the same questions over and over again, because I just needed to make sure everything was going to go okay, dammit!
Jay approached me, asking about playing with tarot cards, saying that he preferred gin.
Wearing dirty blue jeans, and layers of tops, his pink wrap-around scarf stood out. His blue eyes had the faraway glaze of mental illness, and conversing with him did nothing to dispel that impression.
But he hadn't always been that way...
When I told Jay I was born and raised in Florida, he told me that he'd been in graduate school in Tallahassee, had driven with his wife to Key West then up the Gulf of Mexico to Acapulco and Mexico City. He said he didn't finish his grad studies in something scientific that I couldn't grasp because "the draft came calling."
He joined the Peace Corps and went to Africa instead.
"That experience was amazing. Africans are beautiful people."
I didn't ask what happened to bring him to this point, but I gave him a book when I took my leave. I had a hot springs to get to and in the Brown Beast, it would take time to get there.
Several years ago, a wandering hippy named "Gypsy," who I met in Bar Harbor, Maine told me about Cougar Hot Springs outside of Eugene. This was back in my traveling bartender phase, and he suggested I come find him there - if I made it to the West Coast.
"There's a group of us that camp right next to the pools. I'll be there all winter if you need to find me."
Well, I went back to New Orleans instead, but I’d never forgotten the name and location of Cougar Hot Springs. It was almost 10 years later by the time I got there, and in that time, things had changed.
The forest service had driven the hippies away from the springs and started to charge for the use of the pools.
"It really is much better," said Don as he pointed to the lush forest around us. "Years ago, this was all mudslide from people trampling around here and they camped right at the pools."
And probably staked their claim too, making it uncomfortable for those who just wanted to use it for a couple of hours.
That was the way I felt when I first got there.
The approach was amazing, walking through the lush green of the Oregon rainforest, with moss covering everything - there was even a tree bent all the way into an upside down U.
I felt like I was walking through an arbor and five minutes later, I arrived at a tier of seven pools descending down the hill.
Each pool was made from rock and soft soapstone, with the hot water pouring out of a small cave to fill the hottest pool at the top, and the water would cool the lower it trickled down.
It was the perfect interference by man on nature, harmonizing with the Douglas firs towering above the tier of pools, and the ferns and other rushes embracing the rock pools.
As I approached the pools, I saw a woman getting herself and her son dressed, while her husband and daughter stayed in the third pool lower from the top two.
In the upper pools were three men and one woman. The woman was rolled down into a Gollum-style crouch on one of the rocks, cackling as she was talking to her boyfriend, who was in the water.
Another bearded gnome was in the upper most part of the pool, right next to the stream of hot water coming out, while the third was grinding soapstone into powder, which he then used as a cleanser and exfoliant when he had enough.
I undressed and went to the top pool, where the vibe was not friendly.
It got much friendlier after the bearded gnome and the bather left the pool and a new guy, Don, joined the top pool.
He told me all about many other hot springs I could go to in Oregon and Nevada. Then Mike joined the pool. He was at least sixty years old and lean as a whippet from living simply in remote surroundings and riding a seventies Schwinn bike everywhere he went.
A younger man got in the pool, but he did not join us. With his head down, his curly hair and beard shielded most of his face; and he had a womanish bulge to his belly and double-A cup breasts.
He was intent on having his own deeply personal experience of the springs, and certainly had no use for the petty social animals chattering away and fucking up his moment.
He lay face down right in front of the stream of hot water with his arms dangling above his head, came up to smoke pot for air, and then lay on the rocks, and made the "OM" sound in his meditation as he cooled on the rock with a cougar face carved into it.
When he'd had enough of the November air chilling his skin, he dove face first into the shock of hot water and then lay in the hot water with his legs above his head, as he hummed "OM" for enlightenment while he lay in the pool of his own world and provided background noise for the next hour.
In the course of conversation, I told Mike and Don what I was doing - driving around telling stories and selling the book - and Mike twinkled.
"Oh! Are you going to tell us a story!"
"It wouldn't be the first time somebody told a story in these here springs," said Don.
What? Tell a story amongst a bunch of naked people - ages twenty-something to sixty-plus - taking a soak in the middle of the woods?
Ummm....okay.
Everybody should love what they do this much.
Dirt and Donna joined us while I was about five minutes into telling of the birth of Ella Bandita. And they were the ones who bought a book.
"I figured you was an author," said Dirt. "Nobody talks like that."
"His name is really Dave," said Donna, his wife. "But he insists on telling everybody he's Dirt."
I felt rejuvenated when I left the springs and came back to the hostel. The hostel in Eugene is the only one I've ever seen that puts limits on what you can eat.
Vegetarian household...no meat allowed.
But it has an awesome down-home vibe with a fireplace and an automatic social scene with some good folks. The Eugene hostel is a true haven for the solitary traveler and a homing point for Eugene locals that stop by to visit, whether they had once stayed there or not.
The effect is eclectic.
Scott is a thirty-seven year old local who stayed there at the same time I did for unknown reasons. With a crew-cut, Carrhart overalls, and a tie-dye, he was a bizarre hybrid. He had the walk of a good ole boy and the talk of a...well, you'll see.
"I love Eugene," he said. "It's very magical."
When I told him about my day at the springs, that was when he let his woo-woo out as he piled up the rest of the firewood into the fire.
"I get offended by hippies and their naive view of the springs," he said. "There was a time when that space wasn't cared for and when you don't take care of sacred space, bad spirits will come in and bad things will happen."
He then proceeded to tell me about a time when he and a magician friend of his had gone to the springs after taking some "very pure acid" and the spirit of a young woman entered his friend's body.
"You have no idea how crazy it is to see your buddy suddenly become a woman. She had been raped seven times and killed there, and she'd been trapped at the springs ever since because the bad spirits wouldn't let her go. But we got her out of there that night."
In spite of his rather nasty ghost story, I was still so relaxed that I fell asleep in front of the fire.
Yet I could still hear Scott tell Charley, a twenty-four year old that wanted to travel with his savings, to make his money now so he could afford to have his essence distilled to a pill when the spiritual technology was advanced enough, and then be put in a cloned version of his youthful self.
"I want to enjoy my life while I'm still young and beautiful," said Charley. "And you're telling me that travel is a waste of time and money?"
"Absolutely!" said the would-be mystic.
I woke up to see the appalled facial expression of Adrienne - one of the girls in my room, as she sat in front of the remains of the fire.
Scott had gotten on the phone for a round of sexy talk with his Canadian girlfriend and he lacked the discretion, or consideration, to seek out some privacy.
"You've been a baaaaddd girl," crooned Scott into the phone. "Papa's gonna give you a spanking. Oh yeah he will."
I figured it was time to go to bed.
Anyway, today's the day we have our animal-friendly (since we aren't going to eat any) potluck Thanksgiving. My donation?
Wine, of course, and wood. Scott used up all of it.
Peace,
Montgomery
