Trees, Rocks, Rain, Fresh Air, Warm Water

I’m sitting on a wooden slab at the back of a small, dark cave
filled waist-high with steaming hot spring water. A candle flickers on
a rock ledge nearby. I breathe in the cave’s ancient mineral smell and
dangle my feet off the plank into the water. My eyes have been closed
for some time.

Twenty feet ahead, the cave mouth is a diamond-shaped portal to the
aggressively green, rain-slicked forest outside. Water spills out of
the cave into several small, rocky pools below. It’s another world out
there, all bright air, tall trees, and the solid noise of a nearby
waterfall. Inside this warm, wet womb, time succumbs to the silence and
darkness. Sensory deprived, my body, too, is almost gone. My breathing
slows and my thinking slows and I relinquish the idea of writing a
story about any of this—but I can’t completely empty my mind.
Wisps of songs play over and over:

In the cold candlelight, I wait here to be rescued…

I must be lost I must be lost I must be lost this
time…

Wordless melodies, too, even more haunting. Inside my head, inside
this cave, the Cave Singers echo.

Which is not surprising, because the Cave Singers are right outside
the cave. They’re stretched out and soaking in one of the lower pools,
not singing but talking softly in the gentle rain. We’ve come to
Goldmyer Hot Springs—an Eden on the southern end of the Mount
Baker–Snoqualmie National Forest—for an interview.

It’s a good idea, us coming here. A little weird, sure, but not
surprising, since we’d all been drinking when we agreed this was the
best way to get to know each other. There’s a palpable sense of
outsideness to the Cave Singers’ dirge folk blues, the sound of
nighttime and starlight and distance. I figured meeting inside a bar or
cafe wouldn’t be right. The band—singer Pete Quirk,
bassist/guitarist Derek Fudesco, and percussionist Marty
Lund—agreed.

So the four of us drove an hour to North Bend and walked four miles
on an old logging road to Goldmyer. The trip has been quiet, the band
comfortable enough with each other that there isn’t much chatter. On
the walk in, they seemed deeply drawn into the woods and the creek and
the trail. Now they’re deeply drawn into the body-warm water of the
springs.

We adjourn to a wide, flat boulder next to the waterfall 15 yards
from the spring. We crack beers and light cigarettes, impervious to the
falling rain; the air is chilly but our blood is still warm. Derek asks
me to take a picture of the trio in a group hug, which must be a
tradition, since it’s the same gesture that adorns the cover photo of
Invitation Songs, their debut album.

From the direction of the hot springs, a girl strolls to our rock.
She’s very naked, and laughs self-consciously when she
asks—presumably about her nakedness and our
clothedness—”How often does this happen?” She says our cigarette
smoke has wafted over to the hot pools. As a smoker herself, she thinks
we should know. She smiles and we apologize profusely.

“Damn,” Pete says. “Can’t help bringing the city with us, even out
here.”

We finish our beers and return to the springs. I settle into one of
the pools below the cave, lying back on the rocks to gaze up through
the receding lattice of branches and pine needles and mist and sky. Up
above, a spider’s web is beaded with drops of rain. Rain falls into my
eyes. Time passes. From inside the cave rolls a deep, resonant
moan—the Cave Singers are singing in the cave. Not
songs—just sounds, harmonies reverberating with eerie, earthy
acoustics provided by low-hanging stone walls. It’s too perfect, and it
ends too soon.

Pete’s right—the Cave Singers bring the city to the wild. More
importantly, they will bring the wild—all the feelings this place
evokes—back to the city.

After a while, we wrench ourselves from the water, bodies loose as
jelly. We get dressed and start the long walk back to the car.

jzwickel@thestranger.com