Once a year, every summer, I make a three-hour pilgrimage to Soap Lake. Every time, I am surprised and relieved that neither a Starbucks nor an Ace Hotel has suddenly popped up at the edge of Eastern Washington’s most magical swimming hole.
Soap Lake is the name of both the tiny town and the freaky lake at the center of it. Local Native American tribes like the Colville reportedly sent their sick and injured to soak in what they called the “Smokiam,” or healing waters. In the early 1900s, Soap Lake was home to a large sanatorium (the health resort variety), where hundreds of people with all sorts of ailments piled into the legendary “miraculous” mineral waters.
Today, it’s a lot less crowded. Some people, non–miracle believers, refuse to swim there. Because of its unusually high mineral content, it feels like you’re floating around in a lukewarm bathtub that has a little too much Johnson’s Baby Oil in it. It makes your skin feel slick and slimy. Tiny bugs buzz around near the shore, where the water often deposits a bizarre foam, not unlike shampoo. The black mud that people pull from the bottom of the lake—to rub all over their bodies in hopes of soothing aches and pains—is so sulfurous, it smells like the worst Easter-egg fart you’ve ever farted. To be fair, the mud doesn’t smell once it dries, once you’ve cooked yourself under it in the 90-, sometimes 100-degree desert heat.
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https://www.thestranger.com/features/2013/04/10/16458482/the-freaky-magic-of-soap-lake