Column: Hitting my head on the sauna ceiling in Portland

Published 12:30 pm Wednesday, January 7, 2026

My wife and I spent a long weekend after New Year’s in Portland doing Portland things: walking in the rain, eating meals out as though supporting restaurants was our New Year’s resolution. A friend and I even got kicked out of a skate spot by a security guard, which hadn’t happened since my teens. I almost felt young again.

The most Portland thing we did was splurge on a three-hour soak at Cascada Thermal Springs, a wellness retreat that opened about a year ago in the Alberta Arts District.

A receptionist explained how Cascada (last syllables rhyme with “tostada”) functions. The ground level houses the Conservatory, described on the website as “A calm social space filled with rare plants and gentle warmth, where guests relax on daybeds, enjoy quiet conversation, and float in the vitality pool.” That level is also home to the outdoor Secret Garden, which has a sauna looking out at the hot pool, a hot tub they call a hot pool, a fire pit, comfy lounge chairs.

On this level, yakking is permitted. However, below ground is the Sanctuary, with a steam room, sauna, showers, cold plunge pool, hot pool, an ambient pool with whirlpool jets, and a mineral pool. This is a silent area, she told us, and a worker may come through sounding a singing bowl as a gentle reminder to quiet down.

Conservatory and Sanctuary access was behind the showers in the locker rooms, she told us. I briefly thought, “Is the exit literally through a door at the back of the shower?” Dumb perhaps, but I have been a skateboarder most of my life, and wherever you land in the is-it-a-sport debate, one of its many blessings is a distinct lack of locker rooms.

After I changed into my bathing suit and figured out the exit to the pools was to the left of the men’s showers, I waited for Catherine. We opted to go straight to the dark and quiet Sanctuary. I hadn’t showered in the locker room, so I rinsed off my cooties in the sanctuary’s communal showers, next to three women — all of us in bathing suits, mind you — and followed Catherine into the steam room.

I hadn’t even sat down before I realized it was way too hot for me. I basically spent my short time in there trying to decide which was less terrible, breathing through my nose or my mouth. Some ex-Floridian I am! After maybe two minutes, if that, I made a hasty exit. I stepped immediately into the calming mineral pool and sat under the waterfall that cascaded down the back wall into the pool and through the windows of the steam room, made out shapes in the vapors that were presumably living humans tougher than I. After an impressive several minutes, I saw Catherine exiting the foggy room. She joined me for a bit, and then we went over to the ambient pool.

One of the cozy rooms off the Conservatory, where socializing is permitted. (David Jasper/The Bulletin)

My family has always talked about my undiagnosed ADHD because of my inability to listen without interrupting, finish a thought before jumping to the next one and — what was I saying again?

If they needed more evidence, there was me trying to sit still in these small pools. I think I prefer swimming when I’m in water. How do people just sit, float AND not talk?

I moved through the springs like Goldilocks. The hot pool in the Sanctuary was, like the steam room, a bit hot for me. I love lake swimming, so I went into the cold plunge, briefly dunked my head, and emerging, violated the Sanctuary ethos by making the kind of sound one does when you’re somewhere between reinvigorated and hypothermic.

An attendant immediately strolled through waving the wand around his sound bowl. Through a series of expressions and head movements, Catherine indicated to me that he did so because of me.

Fine. I got out and moved in monkish silence from pool to sauna to different pool. In one of the two saunas, which have stadium-style seating, I managed to hit my head on the ceiling when I stood up.

At the water station in the Sanctuary, I pointed out the time to Catherine, thinking it was almost time to leave.

“We have another hour,” she told me. We went up to the hot tub in the Secret Garden, where we enjoyed a conversation with some Portland locals who have memberships to Cascada.

In the nearby sauna, a guy we were sitting next to said it was not hot enough. I begged to differ, silently. He said he’d been in a sauna in Hollywood a week prior. There, he’d read “vintage” ’80s and ’90s magazines — here, I felt old again — about filmmakers making deals in that very spa.

“Must be great to be a mover and shaker,” I thought. Just as I was starting to adjust to my environs, it was time to leave. I stood and hit my head on the ceiling AGAIN.

I should’ve worn my skateboard helmet. Oh wellness.