A Feel-Good Christmas Story

She opened the spa's catalogue to show me. There were seven kinds of facials and a vast array of massages, from "deep tissue" and "hot stone" to something called "moon and tide." There were pedicures and manicures and body-firming masks by the score, all topped off with a bewildering assortment of "finishing touches." And nearly all, she assured me, were appropriate for men.

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My wife looked like she'd just been teleported to nirvana. But I was way, way out of my depth.

"What about the Linden Ritual?" I asked. It was the spa's signature treatment, where they smear you with sage, rosemary and other spices, wrap you in hot towels to bake, and then scrub you down with salt before tenderizing you on the massage table. It sounded delicious, in a vaguely cannibalistic way.

"Sure!" said Farrand, who swore that being wrapped in herbs would make us healthier. "The molecules actually enter your skin," she said, "and draw toxins out of your body."

I'd heard about these treatments; apparently it is becoming increasingly common for spas to baste their clients in the local cuisine. At one spa in Arizona they wrap you up in cactus flowers. In Hershey, Pa., they smear you with chocolate. And in Texas, they use barbecue sauce. Naturally.

Do any of these things have any actual health benefit? Who knows? But the Linden Spa's mantra is "the botanical art of wellness," and it takes its mission seriously. The spa is named after the native linden trees on the property (it uses the leaves to make tea), and it grows most of the other herbs in a greenhouse behind the spa, mixing up the potions in its own apothecary.

It was clear that at least one of us would have to be wrapped in spices, so I volunteered my wife. She quickly settled on the Five Flowers Solace (80 minutes, $165), where you're coated in hot, flower-infused clay; it's cooled to a crust and then the whole mess is scrubbed off. It sounded like a cruel joke, but I kept my mouth shut; better her than me. And I turned to Farrand for one last piece of advice.

"So, what do Cheney and Rumsfeld get when they come here?" I asked.

The veep and the former defense secretary are St. Michaels's two most famous homeowners, and I figured that if they actually did sneak in once in a while to be lathered in organic buttermilk, it would be okay if I did, too. But Farrand just smiled discreetly; if she knows our national primping secrets, she's not telling.

Instead, she suggested the Classic Pedicure ($49) and something called the Herbal Remedy Massage ($185), a treatment involving ginger and lemon grass that ancient Thai warriors supposedly used to recover from battle. Confident that Rummy would approve, I agreed.

So the next morning, swaddled in a fluffy white robe and holding a cup of linden tea in one hand, I met my pedicurist -- sorry, my nail technician -- a charming young woman named Samantha. She guided me up some steps to a white pleather throne with a little whirlpool bath at its base.

"Is this your first time?" she asked. She was speaking in a low, soothing "spa" voice, as if I'd just had a serious brain injury, and I suddenly realized that the spa experience wasn't really feminizing -- it was infantilizing. That's when I began to babble.