Taking in the Water:
Hot Springs National Park
My black flip flops, having been dropped onto the walkway tile, wait patiently next to the handrail post next to a pair of sandals with red rhinestones across the straps. My palm slides down the slick handrail and I lean into the minerals suspended in this liquid and sit on the ledge near the back of the pool. People's mouths move in conversation, but I can't make out even one word among the fight of consonants and vowels. I think the vowels win over the consonants since the floating sounds layer themselves thickly into a rounded hum.
"It's the tile," I think, "The conversations bounce off of the tile: floors, walls, pools." Every syllable collides with the glass shards leaded into the skylight, a mash of jumbled consonants fighting for their lives among the vowels. Once defeated, they fall, like floating feathers, or maybe Fall leaves in a breeze. Now silent, fingers pressed tight against their lips, the consonants, having lost, sneak back onto the surface of the warm spring water slinking about on silky skin. The three tiled pools, each heated to a different temperature, are temples of "healing", and people have flocked to pools like these for their health since the early 1800's. |
The warm water runs down the sides of my face and flows over lost consonants bobbing along the water's surface. An older couple holds tight to the handrail as they lower themselves down the white tiled steps into this pool at 104 degrees, and two men sit up against the side of the pool and add their German syntax to the syllable battle going on overhead.
Before I leave the city, I fill up my water bottles at one of the many public fountains bubbling out natural spring water and scattered around the downtown streets. According to the National Park brochure, the water is regularly tested for quality. Can't get better than that.