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 hot SPringS CinquainS If, when the young man rode up on a pack horse with cameras we had not just plunged into the hot pool then toweled dry, gotten mountain chill out of our bodies (two long-haired waifs in Big Sur eating seaweed from a cup), we might have agreed to undress dive neck-deep into the hot pool again at dusk so we could be snapped for National Geographic; we were not shy in our bodies not even suspicious of his invitation to be in a photo spread on hot springs in the Northwest (who would cook up such a story?). If we weren’t  so insouciant in love with our new sense of female solitudeday’s great climb, full packs and cramps up Ventana Wilderness mountainside sleeping out tentless we could hear ghosts in the wind of the vanished Indianswe might have agreed. As it was we shook our damp heads and lost the chance to be two sleek seals in mountain steam. Months later in a dentist’s waitingroom I found the issue: saw our hot springsghost of our two headson the page. Twenty years hence finds me conjuring up this picture for you of our happy refusal to plunge back in. ...

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