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“It costs a lot to smell this bad,” I joked to my friends and fellow water-signs Janele and Brandon after a day spent floating around a warm pool in Pagosa Springs. You may recognize it as a line borrowed from the demigoddess Dolly Parton, who famously said, “It costs a lot to look this cheap.”
“Let’s bottle and sell it as Eau de Pagosa,” Brandon quipped back. “For the low, low price of $100 an ounce, you too can smell like you’ve spent the weekend at Pagosa Springs.”
“If anyone could sell it, you could,” I told my stylish friend who never looks cheap or smells bad.
Earlier in the day, we had lounged for hours in a hot tub at the Healing Waters Resort, which was recommended to us over a divine breakfast at Black Bart’s. To me, the smell brought back memories of morning sickness, and all day I tried to breathe through my mouth and focus on the healing properties of the potassium, magnesium, zinc, lithium, iron, and sulfate. Eventually, I acclimated, lulled by the warm water, mountain scenery and good company.
The pool and hot tub at this resort are, as the others in the area, fed by the Mother Spring, which is the world’s largest geothermal hot spring at 1,002 feet deep and churning up waters at 144 degrees Fahrenheit. This Mother is too hot to touch, but it is beautiful to look at as the millennia of minerals boiling up from inner Earth have created beautiful rock formations around her.
Despite the funk, I really did feel restored after I got home. I don’t know if it was the cocktail of beneficial minerals soaking into my pores or just finally having an adults-only trip with two of my favorite Pisces. Maybe both.
After a couple of days, the smell of sulfur left my nails and hair, yet the Essence of Pagosa is still haunting me.
I’ve washed my robe, groovy tie-dye athleisure set from Goodwill, and my hot pink Carhartt beanie twice, and they all still smell like a demonic presence. The tank top and shorts I wore to soak in, I decided to throw away after they made me gag upon opening the plastic bag I stashed them in. Their essence was pure rotten egg salad.
In a funny way, though, the smell makes me smile. It really has become a tangible way to remember a wonderful weekend.
