(Places of Wellbeing) Inky bubbles swirl around a small crevice punctuating the ground. A crystalline stream gushes from a twisted pipe into an open-air tub. Slanted beams of light reveal gleaming tiles in a quietly rippled bathhouse pool or the patina of well-worn cedar floorboards giving way to a steaming square of liquid. Some of these bodies of water are protected by ornate vaulted ceilings, having been tended to with care for centuries. Others are open to the elements, seeing the stars at night. Each is a sanctuary; a site of communion between humans and nature, the corporeal and the elemental.

“To soak in a hot spring is to be cradled by the dynamic forces of the planet,” writes Greta Rybus in her introduction to Hot Springs, her monograph on natural hot-water bathing locations and rituals around the world. The Idaho-born, Maine-based photojournalist with a background in cultural anthropology spent over a year on the road to produce her love letter to bathing. The intricate logistical feat, which she coordinated solo, took her to over two dozen locations around the globe, from the opaque white landscapes of Greenland to the dusty pastel terrain of Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat in Bolivia’s Potosí region.

Far into the northern reaches of Japan’s Honshu Island, the onsens of Aomori Prefecture epitomize harmony of natural riches and cultural immersion. Surrounded by verdant mountains and serene coastal vistas, the region’s thermal hot springs provide a gateway to Japan’s rich traditions and therapeutic bathing rituals.

Aomori’s rhythms and textures are personally significant to Greta, who spent two of her teenage years in Misawa, where her parents were teaching. Having returned to the region on the Shinkansen on her Hot Springs trail, she first headed to Sukayu Onsen, a ryokan (traditional inn) with an onsen designed to accommodate a thousand people. “With its windows closed against the late autumn air, the onsen was so steamy it immediately fogged up my camera lens,” she writes. “I noticed how silent the space was in the crowd of bathers. It smelled like cedar and sulfur.”

Her second stop took her to the Hakkoda Mountains to the Michinoku Fukazawa Onsen, run by local icon Mikami-san, who has set up the onsen’s lobby to double as her living room—“cozy and personal and imperfect.” Unhurried sojourns at Lamp no Yado Aoni Onsen, illuminated by kerosene lamps throwing flickering reflections across the water, and Furōfushi Onsen—“two ochre-colored baths next to the rolling ocean”—completed the regional tour.

In the rugged mountain landscapes of Hidalgo, Mexico, a four-hour drive from the country’s sprawling capital, Grutas de Tolantongo is an “intricately designed network of pools, pipes and paths nestled into a steep hillside,” as Greta puts it, citing a total of 80 pools, though she “lost count at fifty.” Perched at 1,280 meters above sea level, the hot springs, are fed by a water source emerging from a large karstic cave “set behind a lattice of waterfalls.” The water is naturally heated to around 20°C as it passes through a series of channels, winding into a mesmerizing turquoise river that spills through caves and rocky formations, cooling slightly as it cascades down a series of staggered pools.

The thermal pools, famed for their mineral-rich waters believed to have healing properties, attract daytrippers and tourists seeking rejuvenation amidst striking natural scenery. Surrounding the hot springs, the dramatic mountainous terrain and desert vistas provide a picturesque setting for hiking and photography.

As Greta shares, the Grutas de Tolantongo are part of the Ejido (cooperative) of San Cristóbal, whose members cultivated citrus and avocado orchards that flourished amidst the steam of the springs. “The ejido system is connected to ‘buen vivir,’ or good living, a concept and practice based on Latin American Indigenous philosophy and emphasizes communal well-being and harmony [… considering] ecosystems, families and the long-term future,” she writes.

São Miguel, the largest island in Portugal’s Azores archipelago, is renowned for its unique inland hot springs, which attest to the island’s volcanic origins and geothermal activity. These natural thermal springs, scattered across the island, vary in temperature and mineral composition.
One of their most picturesque, the Poça de Dona Beija, takes its name from the protagonist of the eponymous Brazilian telenovela. In its 1986 pilot, she depicted encasing herself in mud while bathing in a waterfall in the nude, seemingly far removed from the life struggles of the real person her character was based on. Fringed by a lush tapestry of hillside greenery, the natural infinity pool is burnished orange by the constant flow of mineral sediment its water deposes.

In the island’s center, Greta visits the Caldeira Velha in the shadow of the Água de Pau Massif stratovolcano, whose emerald tone she describes as the gleaming crown in the island’s dazzling palette of greens. “Thermal water, in its wildest form, is scalding and menacing,” she observes. “It must be tempered with cool water. It takes reciprocity to enjoy the springs […] they literally [introduce] us to the hidden core of the planet we call home.”

The lesser-known counterpart to Iceland’s famed Blue Lagoon, the milky, cornflower-tinged Mývatn Nature Baths channel the natural energy of the Bjarnarflag Geothermal Station. Situated in northeastern Iceland on the shores of their namesake lake within a spectacular landscape characterized by volcanic craters and lava formations, they welcome, among other guests, hikers descending the slopes of Námafjall Mountain, who rest their bones and restore their energy amidst the water’s “chest-high water and silty bottom.”

The baths are fed by a geothermal borehole that draws mineral-rich water from depths of up to 2,500 meters below the earth’s surface. Its temperature averages around 36-40°C, making it ideal for all-season bathing. The silica and sulfur compounds that count for its mineral composition are believed to have therapeutic properties for the skin and joints.

Greta notes the baths’ “calm sense of order,” with their swim-up bar, steam room and café. She recounts an interaction with Icelandic anthropologist Helga Ögmundardóttir, who expressed the beneficial normalization of diverse bodies that hot springs offer—“Your body is your shelter for this life,” and the delicious taste of slice of warm, sweet butter-slathered rye bread, steam-cooked in volcanic heat according to the family recipe of Jón “Nonni” Friðriksson, who together with his father runs the nearby dining establishment Kaffi Borgir.

Therme Vals, located in Vals, Switzerland, is renowned for its minimalist architectural design. Conceived by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor and completed in 1996, the thermal baths seamlessly integrate into their natural alpine surroundings. The complex’s architecture emphasizes natural materials such as locally quarried Vals Quartzite stone, which tempers its modern form with a rural feel. Its bathing spaces are characterized by clean lines and geometric shapes, while a harmonious blend of light and shadow creates a contemplative—almost holy—atmosphere for bathers.

Therme Vals is equally celebrated for its thermal waters, which are sourced from nearby natural hot springs and believed to have therapeutic properties. Greta, who described Therme Vals as a “brutalist shrine to hot water,” was able to get around the establishment’s no photo policy by bathing during the day, and returning with her gear at dusk, during clearing time.

“I got to be there in a pretty isolated way,” she tells Maison Ë. “No phone, no device, just watching the way these slices of light came into space and how they changed when a cloud would pass over versus when there was pure sunlight or there was dappled light through the trees. I loved having that time to observe and then also watch how footprints evaporated from the stone after people walked from them, hearing the sounds of the water, feeling how different my body felt in going between the hot pool, the cold pool and the very, very, very hot pool.”

Maison ë Having bathed in hot springs regularly throughout your childhood, the ritual of hot water bathing is integral to your personal history. Yet technically and culturally, hot springs can be a challenging setting to photograph. What sparked the idea for this book?

Greta rybus I wanted to be able to steward the scope of the story so that I would help answer my own questions or sort of satiate my own curiosity about these places. I was interested in talking about some bigger ideas, like ideas of communal land and resource use; even reparations; ways people tell stories about the land throughout many generations.

M.ë Could you share a bit about your creative process for choosing each location? What were your criteria?

G.R. Thinking both globally and individually about each, and then what was owed to these locations, I realized that the role of the caretaker was essential to the hot spring experience in general, whether each person visiting the hot springs views themselves as a temporary caretaker—which is one of the themes of this book that I would like people to take away: that we are all a caretaker wherever we go, especially in a fragile environment like a hot spring. So the first criterion was the presence of a steward, someone who was ensuring the hot spring was protected. The second was story and diversity. I wanted there to be either an inkling of the story that I could research by being in that place once I got there or an intriguing story that I had already been able to find through my research. I also wanted to have geographic diversity, and diversity in terms of accessibility, cost, design and color of the water. Who used it? Are there any local people or is there a tourism industry? Does it feel reflective of the natural community around it? I wanted the Arctic and the desert and tropics to all be represented. Partway through, there began to be this feeling of a puzzle being put into place. I wanted to make sure that the continent of Africa was represented because so many people might visit Africa only for safari, not knowing that there are things like hot springs or amazing cultural offerings. I wanted to represent places known for their spirituality, like India. Then I wanted to be able to represent ornate, beautiful places like Budapest, Hungary.

M. ë From Alaska’s Seward Peninsula to Riemvasmaak in South Africa, you visited over two dozen hot springs worldwide to bring this book together. Can you share some of the differences and commonalities of how people approached and spent time in hot springs around the globe?

G.r. In some places, like Japan with its Sentō (communal bathhouse) culture, you might be seeing your neighbors often and you’re connecting through gossip and storytelling. In places like Iceland, where a lot of people go after work or during a lunch break, sometimes co-workers go together and talk about their day, almost like the way a lot of Americans or perhaps British people or Europeans go to the bar after work or a local pub. There’s also an opportunity for connection to personhood or others. That’s super powerful. And I love how those connections can be very individual. They take a different shape depending on each place, each hot spring location. Speaking to the commonalities, I noticed that a lot of people described a sense of closeness to something. It would be an opportunity to feel closer to nature, closer to their body or closer to their community. Almost universally, people talked about one of those three things. The specifics of each hot spring were conducive to an experience of closeness or connectivity. You could feel closeness to everything from the surrounding landscape to the geology of this planet.

M.ë How did you navigate the balance between capturing the natural beauty of each location and respecting its cultural significance and environmental fragility?

G.R. In the “Ethics and Etiquette” section of the book at the very beginning, I talk about how important it is as a traveler and a visitor to sort of literally and metaphorically read the room. So often I would change my pace and way of working to what I was observing in space. There are places that I visited that were extremely beautiful that I didn’t photograph at all because I knew that it wouldn’t have been appropriate to photograph in such a sacred space or a space that felt that intimate.

M.ë How did the experience of putting Hot Springs together recalibrate your personal relationship with the natural world?

G.R. I felt a very deep reverence for the water. I mean, groundwater trickles down to a deeper part of the earth and emerges with heat and minerals. And that is a miraculous phenomenon. Just to think of this transition between the innermost part of the earth and re-emerging to the surface and bringing special things with it, powerful things that people have used for a very long time for thousands of years to heal themselves or to feel comfort and care. I would often sit in hot water and think, it’s crazy that this water has basically had this little conversation with the innermost part of the earth and come right back up. It’s pretty spectacular to think of a hot spring in Greenland being present for Inuit or Norse people thousands of years ago in a place where there were no trees to heat water. This might have been the only time their body was immersed in heat.

M.ë What do you hope readers will take away from the book?

G.R. Something that I’d recommend we all do as we travel is spend time just in a place without having to document; just being an observer. Even just watching and noticing the temperature, color palette and mood of the light. I can feel those things very clearly in a hot spring, but I also think that they’re true of any other place. Each place has its tone and mood and set of colors and little ecosystem. And it’s worth just spending time noticing it and thinking of how different it might feel from the place where we’re from or the place where we grew up or what contributes to that specific feeling, having a bit of curiosity about it. I also want people to remember that nature has a story as deep as any person. And it’s worthwhile to learn about the story of the natural world around us. A hot spring is a great way to be reminded of the ways that we are also cared for by nature, and that there’s a sense of ongoing providence from the natural world. And we can care for it in return.