Driving home along the highway, the winds were fierce. I shouldn’t have been worried, as everything was latched down and tied up, but the six-foot-across stock tank in the back of the truck amplified the spring winds. After all day driving to Colorado and back, I was ready to get home. I was ready to soak.
Even though my partners and I were finishing up that day’s trip, it was only the start of a whole new adventure — our foray into the world of hot tubs.
As long as we’ve been in New Mexico, we’ve been believers in the joys of hot water. Of course we’d take a special trip out to Ojo Caliente once or twice a year, to celebrate this or that. I’ve enjoyed a couple of midnight hikes down to the Stagecoach hot springs along the Rio Grande. And we’ve even gone as far as to theme our road trips around hot water — a light lunch followed by the “Lobster Pot “at the Montezuma hot springs near Las Vegas, N.M.; a camping trip in the Gila Wilderness, with pools of hot water steaming in the soft autumn light. We make no excuses for our love of hot water; we revel in it.
But as much as we love hot springs, our modest budget doesn’t allow us unlimited entry into unbridled joy, though a fateful Craigslist ad changed all that. A person in Colorado Springs had a funny-looking stove for sale, and it was perfect. The Snorkel-brand, water-tight stove is made in Seattle, Wash., and sits in a tub of water. While someone feeds the stove small pieces of wood, water naturally flows through two ports, heating an ambient pool of water in a matter of a couple of hours.
We set out early one Saturday morning to get the stove, having a hearty breakfast of chicken-fried steak and eggs along the way. At learning the three of us had just driven five hours from Taos, the guy took $50 off an already good deal for the stove. With that and a handshake, we were heading back south, Willie Nelson on the radio and Alamosa on our minds.
A lot of folks who get the Snorkel stove in the Pacific Northwest also get cedar wood hot tubs, too. But again, a shoestring budget had us looking for alternatives — a decent runner-up being the classic stock tank. It just worked out that we bought ours in Alamosa, though there are local outlets to get one too. Knowing more than just three people would use it, we bought it six feet across. As we entered back into New Mexico, the sun was just starting to set in the direction of Ute and San Antonio mountains; we pulled over for a few minutes just to take in this place we live.
You could easily just get a stock tank and build a fire underneath. I’ve heard of a set-up like that in Amalia, with wooden pallets to keep you from burning yourself on the metal. But the advantage of the wood-fired stove inside the stock tank is a slow, even heat. Its easy to get the fire roaring, opening the lid up, inundating the inside with oxygen. Or you can mostly close it off, letting the heat settle and swirl around you while only faint wisps of smoke come out of the 5-foot smoke stack (it has to be at least that tall to actually work).
Certainly, our set-up isn’t “easy.”
We can’t just turn on a switch and have a bubbling hot tub. Our “hillbilly hot tub” takes tending. In fact, the whole business of getting it heated is an all-day affair, a weekend ritual I’ve come to love.
In the morning, we fill the stock tank with water from the well, letting the sun knock off the coldest part of the chill throughout the day. In the afternoon, having cleaned the ashes out of the stove from the previous fire, I build another: a few pieces of wood and newspaper. As the fire gets going, we chop more wood. As the top layer of water gets warm, we stir the 400 gallons with a paddle made from a piece of board and an old broom handle.
After three or four hours, depending on how cloudy it is that day, the water is ready for soaking. A lot of times, a couple of friends will have already come over and we’ll have just finished a dinner of veggies grilled with piñon coals from the Snorkel stove. And if the timing’s worked out, the sun will be setting in all its New Mexican brilliance. Every time I tend the fire and stir the water, I think of that sunset driving home into New Mexico.
Taking a cue from a trip to Japan last year, we follow the idea of “naked fellowship,” enjoying the hot waters as God made us. By the time we’ve settled in, the sun is set and the stars are out. All summer, we charted the movements of constellations across the sky and tracked the depth of the Milky Way — the way it seems to change color, grow and shrink from week to week. There is no way to watch the night sky but soaking in hot water with friends, family and lovers.
Usually, we soak again the next day, or the day after; given a little pool-grade hydrogen peroxide the water won’t get slimy for a week or more. But soaking night always eventually yields a “garden day.”
We’ve taken to emptying the tub buckets at a time, watering the plants the hose just won’t reach. Or we pump it into the back area, a space that was just sage and dirt last year. Every couple of weeks, I spend a morning playing in the yard — moving rocks, realigning paths, contouring and making little terraces and diversions. It reminds me of using acequia water at a farm I worked at a few years ago, because through the water I got to know the land.
Over the summer, all sorts of things I don’t know the name for bloomed and died. Bunnies were born and made our yard part of their daily beat, and magpies, robins and now finches all take turns picking it over for dried grasses and bugs.
From that day when we plopped the stock tank down in the back yard, our hillbilly hot tub has made a ritual out of weekends and a friend out of the yard.
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