By John Gottberg Anderson • For The Bulletin

BREITENBUSH HOT SPRINGS — When I was a young man, travel was very different from today. About the time the Woodstock generation surrendered to “Saturday Night Fever,” I hit the road for nearly three years and for months at a time found myself out of communication with the world back home. Computers were years away from being “personal.” Cell phones and e-mail were science fiction. As I traveled around the world, my only places of contact with family and friends were major post offices and telephone exchanges.

Today, of course — for better or worse — it’s almost impossible to escape the workaday world. The Internet is almost everywhere, and we spend more time with our cell phones than we do with our spouses. When we find an oasis where we can escape those conveniences (or inconveniences), we embrace it.

Breitenbush Hot Springs Retreat and Conference Center is such a place. Less than two hours’ drive northwest from Bend (weather permitting), this rustic destination is built around the largest geothermal area in the Oregon Cascades, just outside the Mount Jefferson Wilderness Area by the banks of the Breitenbush River.

It’s not a fancy resort, nor does it pretend to be. Many of its structures date from the 1920s. The clientele, which some might describe as “new age,” is oriented to health and wellness. Rates include three full meals a day from a vegetarian buffet, classes in yoga and meditation, and full soaking privileges in the steam sauna and hot pools, where nudity is the norm. There is no bar; alcoholic beverages are not even permitted.

But the all-inclusive price is right. Cabins go for $64 to $92 a night at this time of year, $86 to $110 from late May to late October. Lodge rooms are even less. (Beds have mattresses and under-sheets, but you’ll need to bring your own bedding or sleeping bag and pillow.) Miles of trails for hiking or cross-country skiing lead away from Breitenbush, either following the river or climbing into the Cascade foothills. You can do as much, or as little, as you want.

And then there’s the total lack of Internet or telephone service for guests. (The office maintains connections for emergency and administrative purposes.) It’s not hard to understand why the resort has so many repeat visitors.

The naked truth

There is something liberating about being naked with strangers in this environment. While the resort describes its bathing areas as “clothing optional,” I did not encounter a single person who shrouded him or herself in a swimsuit during my visit earlier this month. When in Rome, as the saying goes, do as the Romans.

Perhaps encouraging the release of long-embedded inhibitions is part of the cleansing process that Breitenbush promotes. Without parents or priests standing nearby to wag a finger, and with no hint of any activity other than mere bathing, visitors can relax their reserve, quietly disrobe, hang their clothing on pegs and slowly slip into the steaming water with others dressed exactly like them.

There are two sets of pools at Breitenbush. On the river plain, four tiled hot tubs share a single platform. On an open hillside above the main lodge are three rock-lined pools classified as Sacred Pools. The particularly beautiful pool farthest from the lodge is designated as the Silent Pool, where conversation is discouraged to allow bathers to meditate. Temperatures range from 101 to 108 degrees Fahrenheit.

It is cooled considerably from the water that bubbles from the Earth at 180 to 190 degrees. A geothermal well, nearly 500 feet deep, feeds not only the bathing pools but also heats the entire resort community. Were it not capped, a 60-foot geyser of steam and boiling water would erupt every few minutes.

A small and ramshackle sauna house, built of cedar planks, is another popular haven. Not a dry sauna, but a steam-heated one, its moist heat sends many bathers dashing for the cool plunge (in an old claw-foot bathtub) just outside.

Passing the time

I had no idea how I would spend my time at Breitenbush. As a journalist who seeks a wide variety of experiences, I’ve taken classes in yoga and meditation and have even sat in drum circles. The resort’s schedule included classes in Breema (rhythmic energy work) and Edgu (spinal maintenance movement), but I felt no compulsion to take part in a Sufi dance ritual.

I had good intentions of taking at least a couple of wellness classes during my 48-hour visit. I didn’t make it to any. Instead, I found my visit so relaxing that the time flew past. I read. I wrote. I hiked the South Breitenbush Gorge Trail amid old-growth cedars, firs, hemlocks and thickets of slumbering rhododendrons waiting for spring’s first heat to burst forth with blossoms. I treated myself to a 90-minute massage from a therapist who gave special attention to neck and shoulder muscles tight from hunching over a computer. Mainly, I centered myself and recharged my personal battery.

At dinner my first night, I wound up sharing a table with three others, all of them from Portland but previously unacquainted with one another. Margaret Mallatt, 38, is a student counselor at Clackamas Community College. Jan Underwood, 43, is a Spanish instructor at Portland Community College and the single mother of a teenage daughter. Don Francis, 47, is an environmental consultant and the father of twin preschoolers.

But I quickly discovered there is more to each of them than meets the eye. Mallatt is a clairvoyant who is contemplating a career change to ayurvedic medicine and psychic counseling. Underwood is a novelist who has published a book entitled “Dayshift Werewolf” and was hard at work on another — “a mystery novel,” she said, “with lots of weird characters” — in her cabin between meals. Francis, one of the state’s leading authorities on the Willamette River, spent three years as a young man driving the Green Tortoise, an alternative tour bus that must have been the next best thing to traveling the United States with Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters.

We looked forward to dining together, sharing a table three times a day in the lodge. Meals were served at 8 a.m., 1 p.m. and 6 p.m., and were announced by a bell that could be heard across the resort. And although none of us is vegetarian, we never left the table feeling hungry. We had eggs and oatmeal for breakfast, soup and salad for lunch, additional entrees and dessert for dinner. It would not be hard to get used to a diet like that.

A little history

These hot springs have been inhabited, or at least visited, for thousands of years. Ancient arrowheads still turn up on the forest paths. Native American tradition holds that tribes sometimes gathered here for powwows, laying their rivalries aside.

Named for a 19th-century trapper, the Breitenbush River was homesteaded around 1900. In the late ’20s and early ’30s, this area was developed as a small resort; its main lodge and many of the 10-by-12-foot cabins were constructed at that time. But a 1967 flood wiped out a section of the property, and it was largely abandoned.

Ten years later, in 1977, a young man named Alex Beamer applied his inheritance to buying the property. He assembled a small community of friends, mainly volunteers, who rebuilt the old resort. In doing so, they drilled the geothermal well that heats all buildings, rebuilt and expanded a hydroelectric plant to provide their own electricity, and hid all cables underground.

They also drew up a credo by which the community still lives today. In part, it reads: “We see ourselves as guardians of the Breitenbush Hot Springs, safeguarding the earth and healing water. … Our primary service is to provide a healing retreat and conference center, which promotes holistic health (and) spiritual growth.”

In 1981, the community began to host guests. In 1985, Beamer sold the land to a community association, which four years later established a worker-owned cooperative corporation. It remains so today, with between 50 and 80 adults and children year-round or seasonal residents.

Tom Robinson, the director of marketing and events for the resort, said Breitenbush now hosts about 20,000 guests a year — split nearly 50-50 between those on personal retreats and those attending workshops. Nearly every weekend, a workshop of some type is scheduled; in winter 2008, those include astrology, reflexology and photography, as well as several sessions on yoga and meditation.

“We are booked months ahead of time,” said Robinson, “and we are full, or nearly full, on weekends year-round.” He recommended that visitors plan well ahead for a stay at the hot springs, and that they look to midweek stays if they’re seeking smaller crowds.

To reach Breitenbush Hot Springs from Bend, take U.S. Highway 20 across Santiam Pass and continue on state Highway 22 toward Salem. At the small town of Detroit, 81 miles from Bend, turn right onto paved Forest Road 46. Continue for nearly 10 miles; follow signs to Breitenbush by turning right onto Forest Road 2231 then left on Forest Road 890. The latter are good, graded dirt roads, plowed in winter. The resort is 1.5 miles off Forest Road 46.

Visiting Breitenbush Hot Springs

Gas, 185 miles @ $3.10 per gallon — $22.94

2 nights, Breitenbush Hot Springs Resort — $160

(all meals included)

90-minute massage — $80

TOTAL $262.94

Breitenbush Hot Springs Resort: Forest Road 890 (11 miles off state High- way 22), Detroit; 503-854-3320, www.breiten bush.com. (Mailing address: P.O. Box 578, Detroit, OR 97342.) Rates range from $47 to $92 (through May 22), and $63 to $110 (May 23-Oct. 25).

NEXT WEEK: SUN VALLEY, IDAHO