This is a reanimation of the Vicaribus blog as lived by Miro Kazakoff and Ehren Foss in 2004 and 2005. The photos may be spotty.

We're just trying to like, BE, ok?

Posted by ehren

Parking blindly on a turnout in pitch darkness rarely gives such a pleasant morning surprise; I sat up this morning around 8 surrounded by a full panorama of central Californian hill country. Mossy oaks shadowed dry brush, while nobs and lumps and other small hills made a very local horizon, as if the world were only 5 miles around. Miro and I (when one wakes often so does the other, given how much the bus shakes end to end) wandered around a bit, just to marvel in it, before walking down the road to a hardware store he spied the night before, but it wasn't yet open. We heard and saw a set of roosters, peacocks, and peahens strutting about in a roadside pen.

We drove along 29 to Middletown. Apparently it used to be a vacationing area for the Bay Area, as the Catskills to NYC, but now most of the tourism has been usurped by the Napa and Sonoma valleys. Middletown is now cowboy country. We idly wandered around for a few hours. I sat down to write some postcards and letters over eggs in a diner, and located the town's single sweetspot for Wireless, a tree stump in an unused parking lot.

Around 1 or 2 we made our way to the Hot Springs. Not just any hot springs... these were owned and administrated by the Church of Heart Consciousness (for tax purposes, I'm guessing) I found on ic.org the other day. They run daily yoga classes, seminars on alternative building methods, the occasional Tuesday/Thursday trance dance, and did I mention they're nudists? Apparently the grounds were owned by the Grateful Dead in the 60s, and since then that pulse has sustained the environment around a natural heated oasis.

We were rejected at the gate (vehicle too large), and parked a mile or two down the road in a turnoff and walked back up.

The location was splended -- remote but not difficult, and built cleverly into a hillside instead of layed out across a valley.

Clothing wasn't really optional; almost everybody was buckass naked. I know some of you have complained about Miro's unadorned tookus which occasionally appears at the top of this page, but thank your lucky stars I wasn't able to capture the many splendored wrinkled rainbow of human beauty on digital film this day. Miro swore going in that if anybody was naked he'd be naked too. Shortly after arriving I felt that I looked far more ridiculous with my red running shorts than without, so I joined the club too. Miro and I, unsurprisingly, avoided one another throughout the day. I felt no need to see his wang, and I'm sure the feeling is mutual.

Now that I've written a lighthearted paragraph to diffuse the narrative tension, I should say that it was a relaxing and pleasant experience, all things considered. I read and sat in various pools throughout the afternoon, and looked around, and even though this was my first experience in a large group of people without clothes on, it wasn't that weird. A baby was learning how to swim, a couple playfully fought over an inflatable alligator, and I tried not to get any extremely regrettable sunburns. I didn't feel very self conscious at all.

At 5 Miro and I joined in one of the free Yoga sessions (clothed, thankfully). This was my first class, or lesson, or workout (whatever). It seemed like an intensely relaxing -- oxymoron intended -- stretching session. For the most part I was able to concentrate on my breathing and perform what was asked, but occasionally a socket would pop, or I'd feel a cramp coming on, and that would bring a surge of adrenaline because most of the time I wasn't sure which way to move to correct the problem. I was surprised that when told to breathe into my pelvis or hamstrings I was able to do it, or was able to imagine the sensation of doing it. The physiological basis of Yoga is very sound, I think. The terminology and rituals all seem designed to be relaxing. Not a bad sport! At one point my left arm fell fast asleep without provocation, and at the end my face felt numb.

At the conclusion of the session, which will probably render me unable to walk normally tomorrow, I walked down the road to do some work (gotta do it sometime...) and Miro stayed for the Tuesday trance dance, which he should totally describe because it sounded pretty wild.