We leave the ski resort outside of the state capital right after helping tear down the bike team's tent area. We learn later that the team won the overall title. There was a podium and everything.
On the highway as dusk settles, the van's headlights illuminate an elk and her calf next to the road. Both of our hearts stop but the large animals don't move toward their doom. Cy flashes a warning to the next car coming past but the driver just thinks he's telling them to dim their brights.
We pull into the campground and muddle around trying to remember where the parking for the hot springs was. It turns out to be obvious. Without a campground host, we decide to coopt a site without paying. We'll be gone early anyway. We quickly suit up and walk with headlamps down the wide path.
Lights bob toward us. The lights become two women, who say they saw animal eyes in the dark. Could be bears, they say fearfully. Not terribly troubled, we keep walking - this is central Idaho, not Yellowstone or Glacier.
We light up the green eyes in a small clearing and see the flash of muley rumps as the deer turn and flee up the slope. The women have followed, empowered by our seeming bravado. They have mason jars full of Christmas lights, for a romantic evening, they say.
The four of us walk to the springs which are below us on the river bank. We hear children's voices and see an eerie ring of candles encircling one of the pools. I freeze, put off by the weirdness and the perception that there is a horde of people. Cy soldiers on.
We splash through the pools trying to find one that's the right temperature, stumbling over rocks and trying not to aim our headlamps at any bathers. I am aware of the women disrobing behind us, which makes me feel better about getting naked. Not like anyone can really see me. The moon is a thumbnail clipping.
The women seem mollified by our presence as we test different pools and settle into a pretty hot one. They join. We exchange the usual hot springs stranger banter - a little bit of showing off, inside jokes, a "what brings you here," all that.
It gets more interesting though. What are you passionate about, one of them asks, probably the best hot springs conversation starter ever. They're over the vibe in Seattle, where it never feels like they're gay enough, and they're moving home to Iowa. One of them is a nurse with aspirations of midwifery, and the other admits she's a cop, and says it's not something she talks about a lot with strangers. I think about what it's like to be a queer woman in a police department, how it must feel to defend yourself both from your coworkers and from a community that thinks law enforcement is the enemy.
When Cy lets it slip that he's a recovering cult member, one woman asks, did it shape you in both positive and negative ways, which is a kind and nuanced way to approach the topic. He is appreciative and willing to talk about it - this is how he's working through it.
They sheepishly ask if they can leave when we do, because animals. I in turn ask if we can walk over to their campsite in the morning for breakfast. They briefly meet Jolene, who is more interested in running around in the dark than receiving pets.
In the morning one of the women sticks her head out the window of the short converted school bus and calls to Jolene, who is thoroughly nonplussed.
After we've boiled water for instant oatmeal we poke over and are welcomed into their clean warm well-decorated bus. They are amusingly honest about how annoying and impractical the conversion has been, and how the cabinets rattle loose and the wiring is faulty and the little propane oven doesn't actually work when it's stored in its nook.
They cook an inadequate amount of steel cut oats slowly in a pot on the stove, then have to augment their breakfast with instant oats.
It's a very nice morning interlude.
When we are brushing our teeth in preparation for leaving, a familiar wrapped van passes the campground on the way to the springs. It's Jay and Tracey. She says she hasn't brushed her teeth since Friday and he says gross.
We laugh at what a small world it is. Central Idaho hot springs, everyone loves them.
