Green Options

After a twisting journey up mountain roads or through vineyards, about two hours north of San Francisco Bay area or northwest of Sacramento, and tucked up the side of a mountain, flows the hot springs of what is now Harbin Hot Springs.

The 112-degree Fahrenheit hot springs, one of six distinctive pools of varying temperatures, are the centerpiece of Harbin Hot Springs, a center to experience nature’s beauty while exploring our potential as human beings. A Mecca for healers, sun-worshippers, intentional community seekers, yoga practitioners, over-wired Silicon Valley wizards in need of a break, and droves of people who seek a therapeutic and restorative soak in the springs, embraced by nature.

Historically, the springs have drawn Native American shamans and LSD-tripping hippies. In the 1880s, invalids journeyed to the Harbin Hot Springs Health and Pleasure Resort by stagecoach. Today, Harbin Hot Springs is a thriving intentional community of 175 year-round residents and a growing crowd of over 100,000 visitors each year who come for a soak in the waters, a massage, some bodywork and healing, educational workshops, hikes on some of the 1,160 acres of hiking trails that meander the 1,700-acre property, or some lounging au naturale on the sun decks after cooling off in the pristine, spring fed pool. This is a place to embrace nature, reconnect with your inner self, and enjoy the convivial community.

Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence, a handful of deniers manage to keep arguing about the existence, causes, and likely outcomes of global warming. Not to be outdone by this conventional irrationality, we have a few oddballs on the ‘believing’ side of the fence too.

Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, a new-age religious cult based out of Yelm, Washington, makes exaggerated, doomsday predictions about global warming to instill fear in its followers and convince them to build underground shelters to protect from the “Days to Come.“

According to the prophesies made by the spiritual school, the human population at the end of 2012 will be two-thirds what it is now, and those who survive in the long term will do so by stocking up on food, water, and medical supplies and by having an underground shelter to protect them from the dangers of a rapidly changing earth.