Introducing our Gathering Pool. She's been on quite the journey over the last 50+ years...
Once, so we've heard, she was a giant wooden lined bucket of sorts that our grandparents would have dove into when they were kids.
Then, she was made into one large concrete pool, but, unfortunately, she was over 12 feet deep. It didn't take long for her to get shut down for not having a lifeguard, for holding too much water, and, if you ever saw inside, for having way too many pipes going way too many places.
So, over 20 years ago, a young guy named Rick was hired to clean it up by pouring a middle wall, sidewalk, and a nice top. Even still, the Riverside pool sat unused for about two decades.
Sometimes it sat empty. Sometimes covered up. Sometimes it even sat full of equipment and junk.
Never fully alive. Never fully dead.
If you came here over the last few years, you got used to her ropes and rocks and reasons for sitting unused. Sure, she cooled off some mineral water that fed our other pools, but we all knew she was destined for something greater.
The tall order of her repair was daunting, and it was easy to accept the idea that maybe she would never ever be.
Until we met Rick.
His "fun fact" during one of our Wim Hof Workshops was that 20 years ago, he made that pool. The rest, well, it's now history.
Fast forward to a few months back when we reached out with a Hail Mary pitch that he considered spearheading a re-imagining of this pool with a tight timeframe and, how do we put this, a very shallow budget.
It was clear in seconds that Rick, his wife Sherri, and their whole team were born for this gig. Without much fuss, they paused retirement, packed up on Mother's Day, and parked it here until the job was finished.
In less than 30 days, this space went from paper-drawn sketches to a permanent place for stargazing, gathering, stretching, movement, and, most importantly, river watching.
After decades of emptiness in more ways than one, our Gathering Pool is feeling pretty damn full, and so are well.
Welcome back to somewhere you've never been.
