New Day Dawning

Then they got busy converting it into extra retreat and class space, tearing out bath tubs. Then they dubbed it...Shambala House. Planned opening, to believe sketchy website sizzle, is now projected in 2023 (as if anyone who loves the place gives two hoots in hell).

Could such a plan, callously disregarding the enduring, once-deemed inviolable, water-healing tradition of the once magical realm, actually succeed? Are there really enough 'bourgeois-spiritual' people out there willing to embrace a scene built on the grave of the destroyed, public-minded spa oasis, so long venerated the world over? Or, if not, are Pneuma's pockets deep enough to keep shoveling money into a bottomless pit?  ($77./day in county property taxes alone.) Cash flow dried up so fast, they began offering bookings at 40% off in May 2020.

It could prove doubtful. So...hardcore dedicated fans of Spring patiently await current 'owners' to burn out on their wonky fantasies of untenable diversionary takeover, what some consider a crime against humanity and no more than a temporary legal kidnapping of the place from the mindful public...before at last realizing its spiritual nature won't allow private-minded detours from the realm serving as an affordable healing place for ALL peoples.

In time they'll hopefully see how the upper-chakkra zapping power of Mt. Shasta had maybe somehow royally short-circuited their reasoning power to have pursued such a public-be-damned, exclusive-minded fantasyland boondoggle in the first place.

In the meantime, with bathhouse gone, the place last known has been reduced to basic lodging for groups-only doing events, retreats and workshops.

Chance to redeem place in Springs legacy

It might seem now more than ever that it's a matter of time before the present 'ownership' wakes up, takes a big reality check and relents, 're-selling' place to more public-minded stewards...ones who can set it up legally as a dedicated nonprofit spa and lodging operation, restoring it to its former low-key glory as the affordable, public-minded purification, healing and rejuvenation refuge beloved the world over.

More egalitarian stewards could indeed rescue the realm...with the help of current absentee ones, once they appreciate it's ultimately in their own best interests. For in so doing, they'll redeem their now-pitiful legacy at a place they too love in their own way, albeit in an off-putting, brazenly bogart-minded manner. Sadly, they appear to have never attuned to the establishment's extraordinary love of service tradition of working for the greater good, its altruistic DNA fading away ever since the 1950s, when place momentously left Stewart family's 78 years of dedicated service and went through a long succession of often dumbfoundingly inappropriate 'ownerships'. see history

Barring an amazing change of heart -- or deep pockets grimly determined and able to tide place over with a dismal dream to yuppify place into some half-baked, upscale, quasi new age teaching and lodging retreat for people with more dollars than sense -- some are convinced that enough spring devotees need only visualize a perfect future stewardship to manifest it in the fullness of time.

"Enough' is the key word. Serious, laser-sharp visualization...not mere wishful thinking.

Deeply focused, positive visualizing by every Springs fan who feels that place is just waiting to reincarnate as an open-circuit, community-rich healing resource serving the greater good. For again, becoming a nonprofit healing refuge has been its destiny ever since its founding nearly a century and half ago. Its DNA is still there, fully intact, hiding just below the surface, patiently waiting to be reactivated by the right compassionate stewards...and then the world can once more enjoy the place and experience profound change that the land's amplifying energies and water's properties together foster.      see history

Combine healing transformative energies with stone-pure intent and voila! In time a full-tilt, people-friendly, community-active healing, learning, and rejuvenating center can emerge... one open to all to help planet heal from current historic ravages and pursue newly-honed solitude skills (perhaps one of more positive outcomes of Covid crisis: people learned to shelter in place without going nuts by going more deeply within).

As divine co-creators, ENOUGH conscious beings together visualizing such a reality have the power to manifest it. Conscious humanity is that powerful..

Alternative is unthinkable

If we don't achieve a critical mass of group visualization and 'owners' continue destroying the place thousands have known and loved before finally giving up, due to lack of patronage and/or limited deep pockets trying to subsidize a money-pit, THEN the entire grounds could shutter, not just the bathhouse. Front gates could swing shut and padlock, as they did last in 1980s, sad testimony of tragic polarized times and inability or unwillingness to find the right energies to rescue the place (one with an admitted mongrel pedigree karmically) to foster the planet's well-being.

It was rescued before by an informal local management extended family, from the early 1980s through 2004, with unassuming low-key, folksy healing service, serendipidously in line with the spirit of  the founder, including the willingness to work for peanuts (which became both initial catalyst for re-opening and ultimate handicap, as taken for granted workers became illegally exploited).

If operation closes due to meager response, even after bizarro touted grand conversion of bathhouse, and absentee stewards aren't moved to find suitable new legal custodians but instead try to unload it to the first person with ready cash, THEN a forlorn For Sale sign might get slapped on the front gates. Place could get snapped up by some investment concern with even MORE outlandishly inappropriate and sketchy intentions for the place...and the sometimes tragic, now-lost dream of the Stewart Springs realm would appear more gone than ever.

Wanted: openhearted investor angel(s)

to rescue extraordinary realm

The place deserves a solid redemption. Remember, a Findhorn teaching center was almost begun there by Peter Caddy of Findhorn fame in the early '80s. That's how much potential place has to become a global transformative point. (see book excerpts)

Stewart's is well located midway -- along with Ashland's Jackson Wellsprings -- between California's sister springs Wilbur, Orr, re-opened Harbin and Oregon's Breitenbush for traveling spring aficionados and nature-loving lightworkers seeking safe haven while tooling the West Coast circuit, wanting/needing places to chill and push a grand re-set button as the entire planet takes a reality check.

Fifteen minutes off I-5, Stewart Springs is an easy stopover point for a shifting sea of growth-minded humanity seeking respite from challenging transitional times and wanting to recharge on new levels...without having to buy into any locked, limited structure of enlightenment model, or deal with a place more concerned with power and wealth and private-minded gigs than serving the greater good.

Within restraints of modest welling rate of mineral water spring(s) and limited usable land, the realm's potential to become a vital, low-key happening healing retreat/workshop/rejuvenation center is nothing short of staggering.

It always has been. It's simply a matter of present 'ownership' realizing this...that the powerful medicine of the land, along with the heavy karma of the place's violent tragic past, precludes even THINKING about trying to get rich off the sacred realm or re-purposing to pursue a private shtick, to the extreme detriment of a general public hungry for natural healing while receiving the glad tidings of nature. Current claims of the outfit helping raise vibration of the planet, disregarding having, in the process, destroyed the place as one countless thousands have come to know it, are nothing short of incredulous.

Stewards -- current and future -- can only (and will naturally want to) dedicate efforts to re-build its medicine wheel as a service-dedicated retreat and resort open to all growth-minded beings seeking purification, healing and rejuvenation.

Anything else is certain to fail, having the seeds of own failure built in from the start. Anyone investing heavily in the place with eventual material returns in mind, even with ostensible laudable goals attached, inevitably becomes preoccupied trying to recoup funds and get ahead of the game, in the process drastically watering down the potential healing power of place for everyone.

In umbrella Pneuma's case, its intent appears to be to use place -- even running at a loss if need be -- in order to serve and grow its own affiliated organizations and become a global headquarters. Here's the rub: while Pneuma itself is a nonprofit, California law allows a nonprofit to run a for-profit offshoot, which 'Pneuma Retreat Center' is. This allows it to gain bankruptcy protection if need be against creditors and still keep operating place without endangering the funds of the parent outfit.

That's why its crucial for both profit and private-shtick motivation to be forever taken out of the equation...and be replaced by a genuine love of service that, once again, offers an affordable healing and rejuvenating spa and retreat lodging for a weary humanity.

Skeptics might wonder if such a high-minded nonprofit operation could ever get by financially instead of becoming yet one more chronic money drain. Of course it could, in due time. Do the right thing, follow the bliss, and the green energy follows to support it -- every time.

was a partner for a while. He soon sold his interest...and one needn't wonder why. (It appeared he also wanted the fireplace in restaurant gone, which, judging from their site photo on renamed structure -- Yahooey Golumpus Lodge of Bliss or some such high-flown tripe -- is a done deal.)

Surely we'd hit rock bottom and the only way was up.

Anticipation by some was in seeing the Springs experience a dramatic rebirth as a thriving renaissance rural retreat after the 34 long years under improbable, starkly profit-driven 'ownership'..one that at times seemed to barely tolerate bohemian-leaning, counterculture-friendly patronage that long formed core of support base. Possibly it did so only because it proved great for business, reportedly netting annual quarter-million dollars in last years under Foggy; possibly, to give him more credit, because he was, beyond off-putting relentless profit focus, something of a rebel himself and enjoyed enabling a quasi alternative-culture-friendly scene that was so in-your-face to conventional society's dully limited mindset.

In any event, it seemed a golden opportunity, after two generations of old regime, to realign healing energies and get place's once-powerful medicine wheel spinning merrily once again.

In our dreams...

One looked back wistfully on the old absentee stewardship after experiencing the recent disaster. We had clothing-optional banned, the gazebo altar erased, sweat lodge banished. Masseuse took reduced cut and gift shop consignees' share shrank. Lobby's oracle cards disappeared. Over an acre of stately tall pine and cedar trees were mowed down, almost certainly needlessly. Workers no longer got free monthly baths or even an employee discount; lower echelon workers still worked at insulting minimum wage...Then, incredibly, bathhouse, heart and soul of the realm, was indifferently gutted.

To call the intended repurposed bathhouse building Shambala House was like cutting down one-time majestic groves of ancient trees in a Bay Area spot and then naming the area Redwood City.

Things had become so sorrowful that writer, longtime volunteer, with great reluctance unplugged totally from the Springs in late 2017 after 18 years of psyched work-trade and six years building this site.

Fact that current 'owners' Pneuma website from the get-go began referring to Stewart Mineral Springs as Pneuma Retreat Center boded ill indeed, sounding early alarm bells to any fan nurturing hopes of visiting again and experiencing even the faintest glimmer of former grounded, spirit-soaring enjoyment of realm.

Place is obviously now at a hyper-critical juncture. Assuming the worst rumor is true and place is indeed hellbent on trying to morph into some manner of mostly-private compound for Pneuma-related groups and subsidized by the public groups who can stomach the Kool Aid, Stewart aficionados can either kiss the place goodbye...OR visualize and pray for the universe to manifest a new, service-loving, legally nonprofit stewardship that will bring back the bathhouse and restaurant and sweat lodge with a powerful infusion of community involvement.

The choice is ours.

___________________

Recent improvements on grounds

As  a breather from so many depressing developments, the following is recycled writing on improvements made on place in recent years, plus brainstorms for possible improvement projects. Some updated perspective is shoehorned in but was mostly written years before current crisis, so make allowances. 

One nice addition was the custom hearth work for bathhouse lobby wood stove (seen above), done by local tile artisan work-trader Monica, along with tile work on office, bathrooms, and dressing room floors. One of newer works tackled by grounds manager Josh was tiling floor and walls of two tub stalls and installing trey-fancy faucet fixtures...which, predictably, some love, others hate, others indifferent to.

One huge recent downgrade

In contrast, another project, deeply disturbing, was new 'owners' in 2016 cutting down a giant swath of forest above main road and just down from the hillside cabins. Reason? To make way for installing new septic leach line for bathhouse's greywater, to be pumped across creek (?!). Possibly Health Dept. suggested that off the cuff as wild-haired solution to past furtive dumping into creek...which of course eventually got place in trouble as sorry fact came to light. Maybe it was like, "Fine; we'll go with that" response rather than taking time to seek a more ecologically sound and innovative solution for which the department might've well granted a variance once they did due diligence in thoroughly researching viable options. As sad result, some 30 mature pines and cedars bit the dust -- many no doubt busy happily growing while pioneer Henry Stewart, founding namesake, was yet still strolling grounds, an 80+ year-old believer in the waters, over a century ago.  

This would reduce place's dependence on inefficient and environment-degrading grid electricity generation. Still on table was goal to tighten grounds' aged patchwork electrical infrastructure, reducing energy waste and bringing place into closer harmony with nature, strengthening foundation for healing and transformation.

What might further help?  (Once getting an appropriate stewardship.) Though logistical challenge and requiring serious financial outlay and long-term disruption, it would surely fine-tune energies, creating chill freebody zone, to relocate laundry room and office to new spot, like open lot above bathhouse, and have visitors park along road and walk across bridges. Having the chance to feel creek's soothing energy on approach would help spa partakers better unwind  and let go into timelessness, being even more insulated from disruptive vehicular energies, mundane street-clothed business transactions, and often hectic operational and maintenance hub-bub.

Writer's convinced that non-ideal, now-late, bathhouse setup was more than anything (beyond new, conservative and exclusive-minded 'ownership', that is) ultimate cause of recently re-imposed nudity ban. Place, to own knowledge, was never clothing-optional -- other than perhaps casual de-facto -- before 2000, beyond 1970s' renaissance era under Goodpastures.

go against the grain of place's long tradition of "Allow me to draw your bath, kind lady", working-it solicitude and infrastructure setup of offering private baths rather than communal pools. (This obviously also worked against ideal clothing-optional environment, visitors feeling put off by constant switching between private and public c/o zones with mandatory wrap-up in between...often made to feel, depending on mix of visitors and one's own mindset, either like quick-change fashion models, striptease artists, or shameless exhibitionists.)

Possibly relative scarcity of mineral water precludes ever making place self-serve short of some high-tech rationing system, as precious liquid must be carefully dolloped out. One tech solution: once set limit is reached, taps automatically shut off until reset by attendant for next soaker, sign lighting up and reading "No more water for you!" But just by moving office, laundry and massage meet, while keeping current attendant system, atmosphere would be transformed.

"I deeply love this place and hold its sacredness in the highest honor. Every decision I make reflects this commitment."

   - Rowena Pantaleon, General Manager 2006-2017'

Why did so many come to doubt this sentiment? Especially after she brokered the deal to current 'owners'...who apparently likewise hold its sacredness high. So high, they don't want anybody to enjoy it anymore besides themselves and select groups willing to pay a pretty penny.

As mentioned elsewhere, place has been trying to shake free of benign neglect for decades, ever since leaving Stewart family's deeply grounded, dedicated management in 1954. It was closed outright from 1984 to 1988 but for special groups (including Peter Caddy's) -- yet forever appears determined to find its way back. Even now, despite recent series of mega depressing events.

As former front desk worker Brandy put it before getting sacked for essentially being human, "It's a hospital for light workers."  

interest over the place...as it's lacked a living-on-grounds legal steward for over 40 years now. Stewart family had seasonally called the place home during the operation's first 78 years, as did some later stewards. But last known, there wasn't even a manager staying on grounds. (Wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't even a resident caretaker. First absentee owner, then remote manager; nonexistent guests might've seemed the inevitable next step.)

playing beaver

One could feel unaccountably pulled to help place along. Financial reward was seldom a motive. 

while submerging -- sometimes succeeding, but once breaking person's ribs -- while doing rebirthing (!) That, or be hard-pressed in low-flow season to find a spot deep enough to immerse short of awkwardly laying flat in rocky shallows, pointy rocks sticking into back or belly.

Maybe the thinking of management operation -- often a bit spartan, sketchy, and indifferent around the edges due to a starvation budget and absence of any more mindful stewardship and vision -- was that a cold plunge wasn't needed -- or, more likely, even thought of.

That, or efforts to keep a plunge pool were abandoned due to periodic rampaging creek floods soon erasing any determined effort...along with steps leading down into the waters. Writer once found a concrete step slab in creek while moving rock for the dam. It had apparently been torn loose by creek rampage, reportedly almost right after cement pouring, project done no doubt with fond hopes of permanence. Nature sometimes seems to have other plans.

Since so many wipe-outs had happened in recent years, one grounds manager was convinced that trying to create any deeper, more ambitious plunge would be a futile effort, despite writer's assurance that one dam actually lasted over a decade and gained depths up to five feet -- once, briefly, to over six feet after a backhoe was brought in and before dam-trapped silt and gravel built up again and soon erased the luxuriant depth that ephemerally made the plunge a genuine dive-able swimming hole for summer-goers to luxuriate skinnydipping in.

Countless contributors

by water-blasting away the gloomy dark surface of long years, revealing a cheery light wood tone hiding beneath. And gardener Russell transformed the grounds with the greatest profusion of thriving, colorful flowerbeds in decades, to the delight of visitors and staff alike.

This was, of course, more than a tad non-conducive to any visitor hoping to unwind and heal from the sundry slings and arrows of outrageous fortune...rather than, instead,  experience even MORE at the would-be refuge...suffered more keenly for having let their guard down in hopes of at last having found a place of long-reputed conscious purifying and healing dedication.

• Any would-be laudable efforts were in part (as mentioned in 12-part rant on home page) aggravated by late co-manager Ted D. dealing with Stage 4 liver disease throughout his entire ten-year run, lasting from 2006 to 2016. And in part because there was always so much work to be done to keep operation running without any bigger staff that it was easy to either rev into callous, hell-for-leather overdrive, courting fast burn-out, or unplug and goldbrick, feeling overburdened, unappreciated and underpaid.

One could feel unmotivated to build any more abiding regard for the place and its service beyond it providing a paycheck...and perhaps a giddy power rush now and then for helping run a historic institution beloved by so many and held in instant awe by newcomers.

For former, frequently alternative-culture indifferent/hostile and bourgeois mindset suddenly seemed only magnified -- to point of widespread shunning of place by countless of the place's biggest fans and longest supporters.

Of course, overseers and staffs at a nonprofit, or even what might be called conscious capitalistic spring resorts, can also get caught up in similar power trips and mundane, workin'-to-make-the-rent headspaces. But it seems less common. People often feel more inspired being part of a concerted group effort. They're focused on providing genuine service rather than narrow preoccupation generating green, instead gaining intangible rewards in spirit and inner fulfillment as well as (ideally) live-onable paycheck.

In any event, intent and awareness are always the bottom line, regardless of business model.

In startling irony, writer, seeking a bit of escape, had  just watched Seagal's "Under Siege" movie on "NBC's Movie of the Week" the night before, yet didn't even see his tall personage with exotically attired entourage touring the grounds the next day, being so immersed in coldplunge work. On my taking a break, a local visitor asked wide-eyed, "You ever hear of Steven Seagal?" (He hadn't.) I said, sure, I'd just seen a movie of his the night before. "Well, he was just here." Manager Mary's mother, Pat, having 11 years helmed the office, later told me how she glared at him through window as he walked off. "I just knew the first thing he'd do if he bought the place would be to fire me."

In fairness, pressure to get jobs done quickly and efficiently -- not always able to make due allowance for the fragility of human spirit and hold the ideal of keeping a dignified work pace, especially with rigid profit focus by' owner' -- could make keeping any mindful headspace challenging to impossible. As a work-trader, never needing to earn money at Springs to put food on the table, writer was happily spared any such gnawing pressures. Admittedly such a situation was uncommon. (see Something About Mary) Workers scrambling to keep a roof over head couldn't afford the luxury of such noble sentiment or quixotic vision if 'ownership' chose to over-work and under-reward employees.

Growing numbers are awakening and dedicating lives to healing and unfolding higher selves. Again, as society reaches some semblance of 'new normal', more sojourners will seek such sanctuaries on the road, ports in the storm, safe havens from the fading yet still dominant dark forces gripping our fair planet. Accessible places amid nature to push the re-set button, rejuvenate, re-connect with nature -- sometimes in profoundly life-changing ways.

That's why it's so tragic new 'owners' seemed shockingly indifferent to erasing people's culture and time-honored ways in the course of pursuing their diversionary, insanely inappropriate repurposing schemes. 

Giving some benefit of doubt for a moment, maybe it was only some unwitting effort on being unable to connect the dots rather than intentionally trying to tick everyone off so people wouldn't care if gates slammed shut down the road ...only after being suffered long enough and money taken to help fund makeover. 

But, whatever the case, present 'ownership' could be a relatively brief one. 

A new one -- match made in heaven via conscious group envisioning it unfolding in due season -- can redeem place and the beloved realm at last become a full-tilt, nonprofit, service-loving, healing and rejuvenation spa and retreat.

Writer, of course, should've realized the current malaise would happen. After all, the last controversial manager was the very one who brokered the sale. New 'owners' must've resonated with her "refined" vision of place (or found her useful to stay on until unfolding their own plans) as they seemed way too content to have her continue managing, running rubber-stamping staff with new relayed orders by remote from 150 miles away during her last two years, continuing to flex a counterculturally-indifferent, at times authoritarian power trip.

There's a clue, Sherlock.

Changes under future, open-minded stewardship

With advent of more affordable solar electric panels -- some 80% cheaper today than in 2010 -- along with breakthrough of denser, long-lasting storage batteries like Tesla's, Stewart, could borrow page from Wilbur Hot Springs and get at least some of its electricity from sun. (Wilbur, like Breitenbush, is totally off-grid.) One idea kicked around was to set up solar-operated stirrer for mineral water reservoir to keep minerals suspended.

Electric service carts for housekeeping in warm season could go long ways to keep grounds energy settled, as anyone who ever witnessed their whisper action at Harbin (or any golf course) will testify.

Building faux-natural hot fresh-water pool -- even simpler ambient temperature one (mineral water's far too limited to allow a communal mineral pool) -- somewhere within earshot and sight of creek would greatly boost communal energy and enable elders and handicapped easier access to creek water -- if not creek itself, with solid, railing-ed steps -- further aiding and abetting people's enjoyment of place.

If not earmarking area up from bathhouse for new welcome center/front office, instead could possibly build gazebo and plant grass where visitors could congregate and maybe have acoustic music concerts, poetry readings, group meditations and such in nice weather. It wouldn't take much expense, with volunteer local supporters happily pitching in on work-trade basis, given cool, nonprofit stewardship.

New 'ownership' cavalierly

betrayed longtime spring devotees

Once more we've experienced absentee Stewart Springs stewards . Again, it's the first new 'owners' in 34 years, despite the ridiculous epidemic of rumors over the decades every time a new manager, bristling with proprietary airs like they owned the place, appeared in front office. ("Act as if you own the place," last owner Foggy had told managers to encourage making wisest decisions amid his over 99% absence.)

As said, it tragically involved clear-cutting an acre or two of mature trees. Though project enormous drain of funds (early estimate was $130,000.), it was perhaps karma of former sometimes-shady operation for having emptied bathhouse tub graywater into Parks Creek for so long, and county health department maybe finally checking up on place...possibly actually being invited in by new owners, wanting to be totally compliant with powers that be, possibly on advice of outgoing manager, and of course likely threatened with operation closure if the problem was not duly remedied. (Maybe project was halted after the first, dwindling bathhouse visits, then mandated virus closure, sparking drastic decision to permanently close bathhouse, not being up to health code and not wanting to go a penny more into debt to complete.)

Roguish charm of the Foggy reign was that he was rebel enough to try staying under radar of often cumbersome, nit-picky county health and building regulations, thus keeping operational costs down and change efforts more relaxed -- but in this case at the unfortunate expense of polluting the creek with bathers' diluted toxins. But, again, surely there was some more ecological water-treatment solution out to problem out there if parties were willing to research viable creative option and then gain a county code variance.

and set up the place up as legal nonprofit healing, retreat, and learning center...thus somewhat redeeming their place in the Springs ongoing legacy.

When current mismatch is through with wonky fantasy, with dawning awareness that they'd created an insurmountable mountain of bad karma for themselves, THEN countless fans' focused vision will have cleared the way for manifesting a new, perfectly appropriate stewardship...

...one dedicated working hand in hand with the community to create a rustic Mt. Shasta cultural retreat and healing center, once again in alignment with founding family's dedicated vision.

in the region and those visiting awhile, creating a thriving rural community healing and cultural center.

It would become one of growing pockets of transformed gathering spaces interconnecting planet's like-minded enlightened operational models of human-friendly living.

The details of the actual set-up doesn't matter so much as long as the place is at last becoming a legal nonprofit enterprise...with appropriate intent guaranteeing the place forever stays a people-friendly, progressive-minded, service-oriented healing sanctuary and retreat. Again, that's been the place's DNA all along, with 78 years of essentially such service by the Stewart family.

It merely awaits reactivating.

However the universe manifests a rescue of the place, assuming enough collective prayers and envisionings in time bear fruit, those who honor Springs's heritage for being a rare, down-to-earth, service-loving operation would naturally want to help make it the best one possible.

Talk about empowering... Imagine something akin to Harbin's Church of Heart Consciousness or Breitenbush's worker-owned and -operated collective, just on a smaller, more intimate scale.

One might argue that the new steward should get the place at a lower price (or at least at-cost), by way of erasing the grievous karmic debt of having so long oppressed wellbeing and crimped heartsongs of untold thousands of place's once-dedicated devotees.

As place's intangible yet invaluable business asset -- good will -- was destroyed wholesale, a dollop of genuine good will on their part would help smooth things out and redeem their now-tattered honor for having aided ultimate transformation of place to its highest, flying-with-the-eagles destiny to serve humanity

see History of Springs Also Vintage Newspaper Articles- scroll to 1960 McKinney article

into some greater semblance of balance with nature and one another.

Of course, some note how much easier it is to heal and rejuvenate at an undeveloped

pristine hot spring that one actually has to hike to to reach. Such places, as Stewarts was originally in prehistory, are uncomplicated by commercial, man-made overlays, blissfully free of karma created by man's unenlightened behavior. Indeed, some will only visit such undeveloped springs. They feel near-zero pull to developed ones with their clutter of man-made structures, off-putting clock-watching, and ouchy fees. ("Dead frog skins" was what some tribes called green paper currency.)

Remember that contained in Chinese character for the word  'crisis' is the character for opportunity. It's worth watching over now more than ever, holding vision for future transformation under new enlightened nonprofit stewardship, with keen involvement by the community at large.

Yes, serious money -- land traded hands for $2.6 million in early 2016. But it's a drop in bucket in the larger scheme of things. Of course attracting the right deep-pocketed benefactor would be worlds easier if there were set up some sort of nonprofit Save Stewart Springs organization, but that's beyond my own abilities. Not so for others. (Then place might easily get a fast grant from someone like MacKenzie Scott.)

Thousands around the world would love to see the place evolve into a positive nonprofit mission... a thriving rural retreat center dedicated to free-spirited purification, healing, and rejuvenation...to at long last join Orr, Wilbur, Harbin, Sierra, and Oregon's Breitenbush and Jackson Wellsprings as West Coast nature-healing havens...having once and for all banished its checkered, often tragic, history of misguided intents and wonky mismanagement by the sheer will and collective vision of its myriad far-flung devotees.

Writer heard Jackson Wellspring reportedly guaranteed preserving its service integrity over time because original steward, Mrs. Jackson, had  the forethought to set up binding legal charter for grounds to forever remain a non-profit healing place for public -- even if the legal steward changes. Future Stewart stewards might do well to emulate as much as California law allows. (Calling all legal whizzes...)