Hot, Hot Springs on a Cold, Cold Night

It was winter, a long, long time ago, when the earth and I were both still young. In the days when wizards, draft dodgers, hobos and hobbits still walked freely among us. When people still listened to the Kingston Trio and Tim Buckley – and even knew who the two Jacks and the three Hanks were. (Jack London and Jack Kerouac – Hank Williams, Hank Thompson & Hank Snow, for those who might have forgotten.) When mere mortals, like me, still hitchhiked or picked up strangers on a cold and lonesome highway.

Somehow, for the trip in question, I had both wheels and gas money at the same time. A rare conjunction. Just cruising. High on life. Heading East from Vancouver with a vague trajectory of Calgary, or maybe Hinton, somewhere friendly in time for Christmas. Road tunes blared from my prized Sony ghetto blaster that I dragged everywhere in those days.

I was following Hwy 3, hugging the unfamiliar border region in the southern part of British Columbia. As I rumbled through in my resolute Pontiac, Christmas lights were shining in Osoyoos, Rock Creek, Grand Forks, Castlegar and Salmo, and glowing in the yards and windows of the small farms scattered along the way. High mountain passes with deep snows and treacherous road conditions were followed by valley lands where the roads were well plowed offering smooth sailing, even with threadbare tires. A few local travellers shuttled about, but mostly I had the roads to myself. Just the way I like it.

I stopped for gas in Yahk, a hamlet on the Moyie River whose major claims to fame were once being a CPR railway waystation and a liquor smuggling hub during American prohibition. Hey, you can’t have a better small-town heritage than that! From Yahk, my path would take a sharp turn north along Hwy 95 towards Radium Hot Springs and the Banff-Jasper Highway, where I would have to finally have to decide on where to spend the holidays. Turn left or hang a right? At a crossroads or junction like that, you just never know to the last minute which way its going to be. And maybe not even then.

Driving on fumes, I pulled over just in time. The general store with its couple of vintage gas pumps was shuttering for the evening. When I sputtered and coughed into the lot, the pump lights flickered and came back on. Squeezing in one last customer.

A stooped white-haired man in greasy mechanics coveralls and a faded Kettle Valley Railway engineer’s cap shuffled out to greet me, brushing away my thank you, thank you, thank you, for staying open for me. Collar turned up and hands in my pockets, I stood watching him check my oil while my tank was being filled. The sun had been bright all afternoon, but it was rapidly turning cold as the sun was setting behind the nearby hills. He held the dipstick up for my inspection. No big surprise: down and dirty; like always. “I’ll get it changed tomorrow”, I lied sheepishly. He shook his head disapprovingly but closed the hood gently and gave it a thorough wipe with a surprisingly pristine red bandana he pulled from his back pocket.

As I forked over the crinkled bills and loose change I used to pay for the gas, he pointed his whiskered chin in the direction of the road. I glanced over my shoulder to see what he was nodding at. A solitary figure stood with her thumb held high and looking in my direction with a winsome smile. Yeah, right. Like that’s real!

The old man managed a frail grin through his grizzled beard and sighed a deep sad sigh, as if to say, if I could only be young and on the road again.

But, sure enough, the roadside mirage was real, a mountain-hippie chick looking for a lift. She was dressed in a ankle length pea jacket and blue toque. An oversize macrame satchel was slung over her shoulder. “Need a ride?”, I called out, trying not to sound too hopeful, or too scary. “Oh, yeah, I’m freezing. I’m heading to Enderby. How far are you going?”. “That’s on my way. I can get you there”, I replied gallantly. Now, as you might already know, I have spent a good many years of my misspent youth hitchhiking, here, there, and everywhere, but seldom did I ever have a chance to return the favour. I have to say it felt pretty damned good. Besides…

I waved goodbye to the old man who stood watching me drive away and he waved his red bandana in return. As the hitcher and I headed down the highway, I was chilled to the marrow just from the short time standing outside at the pump, but she was shivering uncontrollably. The heater was going full blast but offered little comfort, only a good deal of racket. On the fritz again. Stupid thing! I told my passenger to retrieve the scratchy army blanket I kept in the back seat, in case the car broke down, and also to cover the gaping tear in the upholstery. She bundled up and smiled most appreciatively.

As the hitcher slowly thawed out, the conversation soon turned, as they always do, to traveller’s tales. I let her do most of the talking. Great  stories. Almost as an afterthought, she interrupted one of her tales, to introduce herself. “Bye the way, my name’s Jewel,” she beamed. “That’s my real name too. My Mom makes jewelry. And, of course, my sister’s name is Amber.” She chuckled at this inside family joke, even though it must have been told a million times before.

Jewel earned her way by picking up odd jobs at local mountain resorts, did a little tree planting, worked the orchards of the Okanagan during the fall harvest. She spoke fondly of her artist mom who built her own houseboat where she lived year-round, even the years when the lake froze. And then she spoke, more wistfully, of a long-lost father, originally from England, who had gone trekking in India seeking enlightenment, or, at the very least, a few bricks of black Afghani hashish with which he wished to secure his fortune. He dreamed of buying a peach orchard in the Okanagan or New Zealand, or maybe, instead, a sheep farm in the Falkland Islands. A few postcards from India were received many years ago, but after that he was not to be seen or heard from again. Perhaps he found his secret Shangri-La and never left.

Her sister, Amber, “the only sensible one in the family”, had a real job and an apartment of her own. She was fixated on changing her name but couldn’t decide on a suitable replacement. Jewel wasn’t sure if her sister was to be envied or pitied. I get that. Jewel, herself, had no intention of ever changing her name. She loved being Jewel.

She told me she hitchhiked, mostly alone, all over BC and even down to Spokane, Washington and to a small town in Oregon where she had lived in a commune for a year. She was the chief goat herder and cheese maker. Then the owners of the land went to protest a tent revival meeting, got religion big time, and gave everything to the itinerant preacher. He promptly re-sold the farm to a developer of trailer courts. The tribe scattered. Jewell hitched home to the Kootenays. The fate of the goat herd remains uncertain but is, presumably, most grim.

Never had a problem thumbing a ride, Jewel insisted. Only adventures. But, she admitted, hitchhiking was becoming more and more of a hassle every year. She had almost enough saved to buy a camperized cargo van from a draft dodger/army deserter friend who was returning to the USA. His mother was ailing and begged him to return. He finally relented. The little bit of cash from selling the van, his guitars and the rest of his meagre possessions would help pay for a lawyer when he got back to Yuma.

As we neared Fairmont Hot Springs Resort Jewel and I were both famished. Our combined stash of her trail mix and my road snacks had been consumed as the miles passed and the stories unfolded. Jewel occasionally helped at the lodge and knew the staff who were wintering over. She thought she could score us a meal and maybe even a dip in the hot springs pool, which was reserved for resort guests and closed to the general public. Unfortunately, the restaurant was closed, but we managed to cadge a variety pack of leftover appetizers which we eagerly devoured.

Then we headed for the pool, giddy with excitement. The pool area was also now shut for the evening, but her friends turned a blind eye. We improvised some swim gear as best we could on short notice with the scant supplies we had at hand and took a running plunge into the steaming waters. Most of the lights were out and we had the place to ourselves with just an occasional staff member shouting out a greeting to Jewel. The water was intoxicatingly warm – and just too cool for words.

“You like this a lot, don’t you?”, Jewel chuckled. “Like, no kidding, eh. What’s not to like?”, I earnestly responded. Truth be told, I thought I had walked into some kind of hippie-road-trip-fantasy come true. “Well…,’ she whispered conspiratorially. I know of someplace even better. A natural hotsprings. Only locals ever go there. Hardly anyone else even knows about it. Want to check it out?” Did I ever!

We enlisted a waiter in our impromptu escapade. He procured us a partial bottle of red, bundled it into an old chef’s hat for safe keeping and surreptitiously handed it off to us. No money was exchanged and no questions asked. We headed out into a bitterly cold night with stars lighting up the sky and frost crystals glistening in the snow.

Despite the bright starlight, dark shadows from the Ponderosa pines made it difficult to navigate as we headed into the forest above the resort. Quick thinking: I made a quick detour to the car to grab the boom box and some tapes. As I was rooting around for just the right tunes, I remembered the emergency candle I kept in the glove compartment, along with a single wooden matchstick water-proofed with fingernail polish. (Every self-respecting Alberta dude keeps such supplies close at hand for emergencies just like this one. There is, however, no good explanation for why there was only one match. But I had to make it work.) The candle had melted and re-solidified several times, as the temperamental car heater either overheated or shut down completely. The gummy wad had tatters of road maps, spare fuses and some loose lifesavers absorbed into it, but, still, it shed some much-welcomed light as we stumbled our way up the hill.

We were trying to follow a steep trail as it wound through the trees, but it soon turned slick with ribbons of ice flowing down the path. We had to keep grabbing onto branches to stay upright. Especially tricky considering the precious cargo we were trundling about. Dense clouds of fog swirled all around us and this became thicker the further we climbed. When the mists parted we could see the bright star fields lighting up the night sky.

Eventually the trees thinned, and I could catch glimpses of a series of steep terraces of yellow rock through the billowing fog. A thin sheet of scalding mineral water flowed over the stone before it froze at the lower levels. Here were the legendary hot springs we were seeking. Sometimes called the Fairmont Indian Baths, they were utilized by First Nations people for millennia as well as by early explorers and settlers for both medicinal purposes and simply for the deep, relaxing pleasure of taking the waters. Somewhere along the way, the region was dubbed “The Land of Smoking Waters”, because of its many thermal springs.

As Jewel teasingly explained, the local practice at this point in an excursion to the springs was to shed as many clothes as personal modesty dictated and stuff them into the branches of a tree for later retrieval. It was, however, just a little disconcerting for me to see several other colourful clothing bundles stuffed into nearby tree branches. They were frozen into misshapen lumps as the mist froze them into place in the tree limbs. Judging by their considerable size, these bundles had been encased in solid ice for quite some time. You could barely recognize the socks and scarfs and other gear entombed in the amorphous masses. Every time the mist swirled over them another layer of ice was added. I wondered if the hapless owners of the duds had met the same frozen fate on the mountain and we would soon stumble across their cryogenic lumps buried in the snow. Or, alternatively, I puzzled, how did said owners get home without their knickers and boots? Another one of those mountain-hippie mysteries, I guess, but someone else’s tale to tell.

The path we were following, such as it was, ended abruptly at the rock face. From here on there was a hard scramble up the slick surface on hands and knees and chin and tooth. If you were wearing a suit and tie or a pinafore of any kind they would be wet in an instant and frozen the next. Kind of uncomfortable to say the least. Yup! Best to go full hippie. Which is, of course, exactly what we did.

Toe and fingernails were required for traction as I clutched at any bumps, nobs or crevices that I could cling to before losing my grip and bouncing and clattering back down the hill, only to start again, and again, and again.  

It took us a half hour, or probably more, to clamber up the contoured knoll of tufa rock. The water that coated the surface was alternately scalding hot, barely lukewarm, freezing cold or solid ice. All of it was slippery. At the top of the small plateau, hot water spurts out of the rock then flows and trickles down the steep slope cooling and freezing as it goes, continually building up layers of ice over the winter.  

At the time, I knew little of the geology and the powerful tectonic forces – volcanoes, earthquakes and glaciers – that created and shaped such natural wonders, but Jewel and her mother became skilled rockhounds while looking for specimens for jewelry making. She was eager to share her knowledge. She told me that the knoll itself was created in much the same way as the ice was laid down, one thin layer at a time. Eons of mineral-rich waters slowly precipitating out year after year and adding to the yellow, orange, brown, green and even blue rock formations called travertine. The springs were as old as the surrounding Purcell, Selkirk and Bugaboo mountains themselves. They were formed when the entire Rocky Mountain Range was still young and crazy, 80 to 50 million years ago, with millions more years and many more geological adventures still ahead of them.

All this geology stuff was well and good, but, at the time of our climb, I was, understandingly, more focused on survival and didn’t pay close attention to the nuanced details of her lecture. I can assure you it took everything I had to climb that knobby knoll while maintaining what little dignity I had left, while also preventing hard-to-explain bumps, scrapes, breaks, rattles and contusions to my person, especially, any painful – and very embarrassing – frostbite injuries. Even more important, I had to protecting the infinitely more valuable bottle of wine and my precious ghetto blaster. But, somehow, we finally made it… Even the candle blob was still lit and held high in Jewel’s capable hands, albeit spitting and sputtering whenever the flame ignited the lifesavers.

At the top of the knoll Jewel showed me few bathing pools chiselled into the bedrock by early visitors to the site. Later, in the 1920s, the nearby stone hut was built with tubs sunk into a concrete floor.  Windows and doors were left open so bathers could enjoy the view of the mountains by day and the stars and moon by night.

Sometimes branches and blankets would be added to act as windbreaks as it can get very cold and windy in this exposed location. Very quickly these makeshift shelters would be covered in thick layers of ice from the ice fog rising from the water and instantly freezing.

I loaded the ghetto blaster with Leonard Cohen tunes and we settled in for a long, luscious and well-earned soak. We passed the wine back and forth and reveled in the contrast of the soothing hot water and the cold mist swirling around us. Starlight flickered through the open windows and door whenever the mist parted for a moment. The faithful candle blob added its warm orange glow to the magical scene. So darned cool, I could hardly stand it. (And, yes, OK, I will reluctantly admit, there might have been some flirting.)

Local folks, including Jewel’s mother, had added to the historic stone structure by building a couple of extra rooms out of cinder blocks. These were fitted out with old-fashioned enameled steel bathtubs, the kind that are mounted atop large, lion’s-paw feet. This is where we set up camp. The hot waters trickled into the tubs then spilled out over the rounded tops keeping the waters at a constant temperature: very, very hot.

Now, decades later, I warmly recall the pretty mountain girl and the grizzled oldtimer from Yahk with the frayed railroader’s cap and the bright red bandana who silently introduced me to her. But, now it is I who is the old greybeard, sighing a deep, sad sigh for the wide, wide world and the boundless future that once was mine. And mourning too for a more innocent time when strangers could still meet on a lonely winter road and share a marvelous adventure together.

Still, I do have the wonderful memory – and now a story to share – of that hot, hot springs on that cold, cold night in the mountains and borderlands of BC. Another bittersweet tale of my life on the road – back when the world and I were both so achingly young. Aaaaaahhhhh……

Postscript: Alas, sometime after my nocturnal visit, the cinder block rooms at Fairmont Indian Baths were unceremoniously demolished by park authorities. The stone hut, however, was faithfully restored and declared a historic site, a very good thing, for which I give thanks. The sunken baths inside have been placed strictly off limits, even for local scofflaws. So put away your bottles of red wine, ghetto blaster and lifesaver-candles and warm yourself instead with the sweet melancholy of my little tale.

You can, of course, still visit these legendary hot springs anytime, you might even be able to find the original outdoor tubs carved directly into the knoll. Perhaps, when you do go, however, you too can take a moment to raise a toast, give a blessing, or wave a red bandana for my two dear old friends who guided me to those enchanted healing waters so many, many years ago.