Last train to Hot Springs

When I was 19 my sister and I took a side trip around the island of Sicily during a two-month family stay in my mom’s home town of Sant’ Ambrogio on Sicily’s northern coast, just an hour or so from Palermo. Sant’ Ambrogio has a population of about 200 but a mere seven kilometer drive will land you in Cefalù, which has become wildly popular since those visits of my youth. It was already well on its way to being a vacation hotspot—I recall it swarming with mostly German tourists—but now I wouldn’t consider going there in July and August, which were our usual vacation months.

That summer we took a train around the periphery of the island, stopping to stay where the spirit moved us. I don’t remember how it happened—I think we just followed the crowds—but one day we found ourselves hopping a ferry headed for Lipari, one of what is usually referred to as the Aeolian Islands, a volcanic archipelago in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Some of us went for the scenery and to have a new experience, but the older people were looking to bask in the healing mud baths, the source of which was the volcanic pumice quarry.

As soon as we debarked, people began peeling off their clothes and wading into the chalky waters. It didn’t take much before my sister and I started slathering ourselves with mud. Oh, if I could only upload those photos! But it was long before the digital age. Each time we’d look at each other we’d guffaw and slather some more. The whole place smelled of matchsticks and for a solid week, no matter how many times we washed ourselves, as soon as our skin dried it turned the same pale white of the mud.

That was my first experience with man’s rush to yield to nature’s healing properties, even though I was thankfully free of desperation because at 19 nothing much ever hurts.

So last week I decided to spend a few days at the (relatively) nearby hot springs in Arkansas, to check out the old bathhouses on the strip located right across the street from Hot Springs National Park called Bathhouse Row. Most of those old bathhouses are closed down now, though not for long since they've been cleaned up. One is still operational; the Buckstaff, has been running steadily since 1912. I tried to get in for an old-time bathing experience but the lines were long and their hours are short.


So I went to one of the many others instead, the old Arlington Hotel bathhouse. Let’s just say it’s seen better days. Not much of an effort has been made to spiff up the place (unlike the Buckstaff, which has all the charm of an old bathhouse but none of the creeping inevitabilities that a facility regularly hitting steamy temps in excess of 100 degrees would have. I got dunked, scrubbed, wrapped and patted down just like the ladies before me did as long as 140 years ago. The rooms were clinical and stark and no creature-comfort efforts were made.

There are over 100 hot springs in the US alone, mostly on the coasts, and if you’ve never been I encourage you to visit one, just to see what counted as medicine to our forebears. It’s sobering, for sure. But guess what? The bathhouses are experiencing a resurgence of interest as we march willingly back to the days of natural remedies for preventive and disease care.