Not a care in the world in these hot spring waters

I’m getting myself in really hot water. First I got coated in mud hip-deep. Then I lay about indulgently for an eternity. Then I splashed about in a mini-water park. Now I’m sliding into scalding water to lie about some more. After that, I’ll rest again.

This wholly un-Puritan episode is by design. I’m at a hot springs resort in Calistoga, the gloriously easygoing small town at the top end of the Napa Valley, and I’m doing something Westerners have done for thousands of years, in the same place, maybe even the same fashion. Well, maybe not -- there are those cucumber slices. More on that in a minute.

Northern California is the world capital of laissez-faire hot-spring soaking. Within a few hours drive of one another, Calistoga, Harbin Hot Springs and Wilbur Hot Springs offer relaxation, restoration and the sort of only-in-California experiences that make you think, hmm, didn’t I see this in a movie?

At Indian Springs Resort and Spa in Calistoga, for instance, the hot-mud treatment starts when I lie down in a concrete basin filled with hip-deep indigo goop and attendants ladle more atop my torso. It’s the most penetrating warmth I’ve ever encountered. Makes your bones feel like muffins. Your joints turn to mohair.

It’s volcanic ash mud, locally sourced, as they say these days (dug out back with a backhoe). Though I lobby for more, my repose here is limited to 10 minutes, because, “We don’t want to cook you into noodle soup.” Despite the time limit, the relaxation effect is sufficient to convince me hours have passed.

Then, in succession, I’m led to a pummeling shower where I hose off the mud; over to a deep tub of hot mineral-geyser water for a follow-up 15-minute soak; then under a cool shower to restore thermal normalcy. Then a session in a steam room, then another shower. Then I’m led like an old horse down a hall to an austere resting room where I can lie quietly for an indefinite while. The attendant places a slice of cucumber over each eyelid. Yes, really.

“There seems to be something about cucumber that enhances the cool, calming effect,” she explains. “Maybe it’s aromatherapy.”

Maybe so. More time passes, cucumber-aided. I can sip on cucumber-lemon water when I wish. Detect a theme here? I daydream of cucumber finger sandwiches in a Kensington-district London hotel. Then pickles intervene. Lemon dill gherkin pickles. Strange where the mind goes, left free to wander the labyrinthine hallways of indolence.

Eventually, I rise and dress and stroll around the resort. It’s autumn, and the weather is way better than in London -- 65 degrees, a pleasant, hazy sunshine, light breeze ruffling the palm leaves overhead.

On the slight rise overlooking the quiet compound of cottages and rooms, the huge Indian Springs pool, a historic 1917 facility, wafts mist into the afternoon air. On a ridge beside it, geysers thrum and throb steam. In the pool I find acres of unoccupied 102-degree mineral water in which I can float and splash and let the scent of sulfur supplant cucumber essence.

The name, Indian Springs, harks back to the supposed use of the geyser water and warm mud by Native Americans of the region, a factoid that struck me as, well, colorful, until I chatted with a hot springs expert, Dennis Griffin, who did his master’s thesis on indigenous use of West Coast hot springs.

Many tribes consider them sacred sites and would not tell Griffin exactly what their traditions entailed, but he made a point of visiting almost every hot spring west of the Rockies and north of Sacramento. Now Oregon’s state historic preservation officer, he learned that sweat lodges were often built on platforms above the springs for spiritual ceremonies, and westering pioneers used hot spring mud to pack the bearings in their wagon wheels -- not to mention bathing and washing their clothes in the springs themselves.

Bathing (with soap) is now verboten, by custom and regulation, in most hot springs, including commercial developments such as Indian Springs. I would have said that sacred uses were also history, until I visited Harbin.

In the early 20th century, this property outside Middletown was the Harbin Health & Pleasure Resort. Now, it’s a retreat complex that is the world center for the Heart Consciousness Church, a New Age outpost of the human potential movement (paraphrasing its own description). Here visitors meditate, reflect and practice bedroom yoga, or what Harbin calls “unconditional dance.”

I missed the latter, but I did discover that a visit to Harbin is itself an unconditional dance with cultural adventure.

Harbin’s central feature is its Hot Pool, whose 113-degree water issues from an altar-like fixture in the wall above the pool. This is, to devotees, a sacred place, so I must wait my turn to descend the ladder into the pool. As dark descends, I head outside to a cooler, larger pool. There are a dozen or so of us here, people of various descriptions, ages and garbs, including, of course, none.

Harbin is clothing-optional. That’s not the only choice to be made here in the Warm Pool, I discover, when an Adonis-like fellow arrives to lead a full moon welcoming ceremony. “Join us for all, or part, or just relax and watch,” he says, Jesuitically, “and appreciate the wonder of the universe.”

Sure enough, la luna appears above a nearby ridge just then, and the welcoming ceremony is a blissfully polytheistic bouillabaisse of chants, invocation, prayer and song that concludes with “Amazing Grace.” None of us sings as well as Judy Collins, but moonbeams paint the water platinum. Hands stretch out, palms up, to the light. It’s bright enough to read an IRS form. Human beings as unclad as God sent us into the world shift and sway in the water. Having been to all 50 states and vividly aware that some Northern Californians believe there are actually 51 states, I can’t help but envision how this would play in Peoria.

Lest anyone, Peorians or Angelenos, think Harbin offers only New Age waftiness, I would like to point out it is also the place where Watsu was invented. This popular (and worthwhile) form of water-immersion bodywork is now offered at hundreds of high-octane commercial spas around the world, including Fairmont’s Sonoma Mission Inn down the road from Harbin -- and if that’s not cross-cultural diversity, I don’t know what is.

Beguiling though moonlit chants and invocations may be, I’m fonder of early morning silence at my favorite Northern California retreat, Wilbur Hot Springs, a blessedly quiet, low-key historic resort in the mountains east of Clear Lake. Tucked in a narrow valley whiskered with ghost pine and blue oak, with deer browsing manzanita and hawks keening overhead, Wilbur is otherworldly by character rather than spiritual pursuit.

Its two key features are a sturdy early 20th century stucco hotel and the soaking pools. There are three of these in an austere, Asian-style redwood bathhouse perched beside Wilbur Creek. Each 20-foot-long concrete tub holds hot, highly mineralized water, from 98 to 110 degrees. Below the bathhouse are a cool pool of spring water and decks for sunbathing. One simply soaks and rests, soaks and rests. That’s the point, erasing a million e-mails, invoices and traffic jams from your mind.

At mealtimes, you repair to the communal kitchen to prepare your own food with fellow parboiled pilgrims; after dinner you might hear a semi-famous music producer pick out songs on one of the half-dozen resident Wilbur guitars. Then it’s back to soak and rest.

Wilbur’s rules impose 24-hour quiet in the bathhouse, but when I’m there to greet the dawn I usually have the place to myself. No breeze stirs the pines. Wilbur Creek lightly crinkles the quiet. I decide to focus on the morning star, poised above a pine branch, and watch the spot till daylight brushes it out. How long that takes, I cannot later say, but it’s somewhere between a firefly blink and a lifetime.

travel@latimes.com

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If you go

THE BEST WAY TO NAPA

Oakland, Santa Rosa and Sacramento are the most convenient airports for travel to Calistoga, Harbin and Wilbur. Southwest offers nonstop service to Oakland, and Delta and US Airways offer connecting service (change of planes). Restricted round-trip fares begin at $182. Alaska offers nonstop service to Santa Rosa. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $212. United and Southwest offer nonstop service, and Delta, United and US Airways offer connecting service to Sacramento. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $172.

CALISTOGA

The charming hamlet of 5,000 has a half-dozen hot spring resorts from basic (motels with piped-in spring water) on up. Indian Springs is the oldest and biggest, with cottages and hotel-style rooms. Doubles from $185; (707) 942-4913, www.indianspringscalistoga.com.

HARBIN HOT SPRINGS

Potential visitors to Harbin Hot Springs must keep two things in mind. First, a membership ($10 per month) is required for at least one visitor and can be acquired on entry. Second, despite its counterculture reputation, Harbin prohibits drugs and alcohol (and cellphones must be turned off); doubles from $90; (707) 987-2477, www.harbin.org.

WILBUR HOT SPRINGS

The most remote and secluded of the three, Wilbur offers just soaking, lodging and a large guest kitchen. Visitors must bring their own food and cook for themselves in the excellent communal kitchen. It’s less than a two-hour drive from the Sacramento or Santa Rosa airports. Doubles from $185; (530) 473-2306, www.wilburhotsprings.com.