New Age Escape

"Slow Down," reads the sign which greets visitors to the New Age Health Spa, "Your New Age Experience Starts Here." Further down the long driveway leading to this spa complex in the heart of the Catskills is another placard, stuck onto a post above a trash barrel. "Leave your worries, cigarettes, candy, alcohol, and drugs here," it demands. The barrel is almost full.

A few years ago Werner Mendel gave up the go go life of a Wall Street mogul. Together with his wife Stephanie Paradise, a Canadian social worker, they bought a 155 acre fat farm which had seen better days, and transformed it into the New Age Health Spa, an island of good living, healthy food, and exercise in the heart of the gluttonous Borscht belt.

Famous as one of Mayor Marion Barry's favorite retreats, the New Age Health Spa makes a point of creating a world removed from the everyday cares suffered by those in the fast lane. Bedrooms are typical New England country-style, without the distraction of telephones or television. Most have views of the sweeping grounds, and of the deer who forage nearby.

The Spa offers an array of indoor and outdoor activities from which to pick and choose. There's the Zen Dawn meditation at 6:15am, and a selection of floorwork, stretch, and yoga classes throughout the day. The classes are noteworthy because they are conducted by enthusiastic professionals, either in the exercise room with its view os the surrounding countryside, or weather permitting, on a nearby hill. Guests who don't know a lotus position from interval aerobics are made to feel welcome.

A pool with a wonderful solarium as well as smallish steam and saunas help iron out the kinks of sedentary life.

The Spa offers a number of organized outdoor activities, which, like the indoor activities, take full account of varying abilities. Every morning at 7:30 the robust and industrious gather for an aerobic walk followed by a healthy if not hearty breakfast, low in calories and high in fibre and complex carbohydrates. In winter you can snow shoe or cross country ski for miles on self-guided trails cut throughout the property, or go along with Stephanie and her two dogs. When the snow disappears, hikes, some of them up to a rigorous fifteen miles, are organized to the national forest and Appalachian Trail nearby.

All of these diversions are simply on offer. There is no requirement to do any more or less than what you fancy. There's plenty of room to spend days simply walking aimlessly through the countryside, or pampering yourself with a range of a la carte massages, mud treatments, loofa rubs, and facials. Nothing feels better, however, than a good hour long massage after a day of much-needed exercise.

After dinner, there are lectures on topics ranging from nutrition to stress reduction. Or you can sit by the hearth, or watch a video in the common room. The Spa self-consciously aims at creating the conditions of a spiritually and physically healthy lifestyle. You don't have to buy into the whole program however to experience, even after one day, the sense of restfulness and reinvigoration that are the hallmarks of a true getaway vacation.

The New Age Health Spa is in Neversink, New York, an easy two and one half hour drive from New York City. Limo service is available from midtown. Weekend rates run from $224 per person [with all meals] to $535.