The Spa Solution : Relief for the stressed-out, from low-cost to luxury : New Mexico: Southwestern style, with no pressure

They don’t force you to rise at dawn to huff your way up the nearest mountain, while you pretend that crisp air, vigorous exercise and harsh morning light actually thrill you.

You don’t necessarily have to give up your chateaubriand and Cabernet Sauvignon to stay on your diet.

And should you want to be downright anti-social, it’s totally OK if you want to pass on aqua aerobics and hide in your room listening to Public Enemy tapes.

Vista Clara is my kind of health spa. Even smoking is sanctioned there, as long as it’s done outside and not in the retreat’s gracious adobe structures, which rest quietly in the foothills of New Mexico’s Sangre de Christo Mountains in Galisteo, 22 miles south of Santa Fe.

They are truly dedicated at Vista Clara Spa and Health Retreat--dedicated to allowing each guest to follow his or her own inner wisdom regarding personal health routines. But get this: There is so much unconditional acceptance of and allowance for individual preferences that visitors tend to drop all their resistance to “the program.”

Most want to jump in with authentic enthusiasm, eating the delicious low-fat concoctions that masquerade as regular food. They want to move intensely, pumping and sweating in back-to-back exercise classes. Many even want to get up at the crack of dawn to experience that suddenly beautiful, beckoning mountain ridge.

At least I did. And I am a tough sell when it comes to anything remotely resembling sacrifice. I spent the last three days of 1990 at Vista Clara, not knowing before I went if I’d like it. I’d heard encouraging things about it through the grapevine--that its nouvelle Southwestern cuisine was as good as it was gorgeous, that American Indian practices such as Indian dancing and instruction on how to use a medicine wheel were an optional part of the program, and that the accommodations were exquisite. But I still feared that I would somehow be coerced into dragging my completely California-ized bones through the freezing snow on a stupid, let’s-watch-the-sunrise mountain hike.

Opened about a year ago, Vista Clara was created by Chris and Carmen Partridge. He’s a 50-year-old real estate developer and she’s a 48-year-old sculptor. They fled New York City in 1986 and moved to Galisteo, expecting to retire there. But the area energized them so much that they decided to create an entirely new career. “We found it so naturally peaceful and healing here, we thought ‘Let’s share it,’ ” says Chris Partridge.

On 80 pristine acres of land, they installed state-of-the-art fixtures and amenities in an existing 150-year-old adobe pueblo. They had new buildings created that were designed to be stylistically indistinguishable from the adobe or complementary to it. The spacious guest rooms are sparsely but serenely furnished with handmade, Santa Fe-style furniture and Persian rugs. Hand-painted Mexican tiles adorn the thoroughly modern bathrooms.

In the therapy center, nine-nozzle showers compete for attention with reflexology treatments. And in an authentic American Indian kiva, a round temple built deep into the earth, exercise sessions are held, as are rock-climbing classes that utilize a specially built training wall.

Because the Partridges have many American Indian friends and wanted the retreat’s programs and facilities to reflect that which is indigenous to the area, there are also four teepees on the property. They were created by a Sioux living in the Dakotas and were ceremonially installed on the Vista Clara land by a Shoshone friend of the Partridges.

Not many visitors do it, but there is the option of sleeping out in one of the teepees. Guests are far more likely to spend time at Vista Clara learning about American Indianfolklore. On Wednesdays, Julie Rivers, a white woman who has lived with American Indians, arrives to teach guests how to create medicine bags, leads Indian dancing sessions and lectures on the earth’s natural forces. Rivers also presides at a traditional sweat lodge purification ritual for anybody who’s up to it (almost everyone is).

Outside of standard low-impact aerobic and stretch classes, not much of anything at Vista Clara is predictable spa fare. For those who are not enamored of American Indian practices, there’s a weekly visit from Richard Patton, better known as “The Mountain Man.” Patton holds a Ph.D. in animal nutrition and works as a consultant to major ranches and zoos throughout the country, but as a part-time hobby he takes people out into the wilderness. At Vista Clara, he rides up on a horse and strides into the pueblo wearing authentic 1840s costume.

Then he joins the guests as hors d’oeuvres are served before dinner. “He gives a talk about the settling of Santa Fe, about the traits it took to conquer the wilderness and how those traits are alive and well within each of us,” says Chris Partridge. “He does his talk and then rides off like the Lone Ranger.”

On another evening, guests can hear a talk by Bill Dean, M.D., who runs the Institute for Self-Healing in Santa Fe. “He talks about how an ailment is the body talking to you about what you’re ignoring in your life,” adds Partridge. “And on another evening we have Alvaro Waterman, who has a Ph.D. in psychology and spent 20 years researching various parts of the brain and how they relate to dream interpretation. The guests receive dream assignments. They ask that in their dreams they will be shown what they need to learn. The next day, during their free time, guests can talk with Gabriella Waterman, his wife, who helps them to discover what their dreams mean.”

For guests who want to bypass lectures and just concentrate on pampering themselves, there are three or four exercise classes each day (including stretch and relax, salsa aerobics, funk aerobics and aqua aerobics). In the afternoon, guests are scheduled for two pampering sessions (aromatherapy, facials, foot reflexology treatments, clay body wraps and paraffin manicure/pedicure treatments among them).

During my off-season visit, there were just a handful of guests present (at that point, Vista Clara was still relatively undiscovered) and, to my delight, the early morning hike was canceled due to the severity of the weather--despite the fact that I was miraculously willing to participate.

Then there is the food. It’s prepared by 30-year-old Graham Griswold, a New Mexico native who has studied with James Beard and who worked as an underchef at St. Estephe, the world-renowned nouvelle Southwestern restaurant in Manhattan Beach. From chef/owner John Sedlar, Griswold learned the art of sauce painting, or turning dishes into stunning works of art with names such as Kachina Harvest (ruby red kokanee(), a salmon native to New Mexico, wrapped in filo dough and stuffed with fresh vegetables). And from Bill Anderson, formerly a chef at the Golden Door, Griswold learned to make Southwestern cuisine decidedly low-calorie. (The Partridges had Anderson flown to Galisteo to spend six weeks at Vista Clara, teaching Griswold how to reduce calories without reducing taste.)

I can’t say that the food at Vista Clara is the best I’ve ever eaten. But it was certainly the prettiest and most elegant. As Chris Partridge puts it, “You don’t know whether to eat it or hang it on the wall.” For low-cal, low-salt, low-fat food, however, it was scrumptious.

Griswold would have prepared my food with more fat, sugar and salt if I’d requested it. He prides himself on serving as a semi-private chef to each guest. Indeed, that feature and Vista Clara’s limit of 14 clients has apparently made the place appealing to Hollywood types--they can leave their bodyguards at home. Big eaters and juice fasters similarly feel at home. And though the spa usually serves no alcohol and concentrates on chicken, fish and vegetarian dishes, it has made exceptions.

Recalls Christopher Partridge, the Partridges’ eldest son and the spa’s advertising and marketing director: “We don’t want to tell you what to eat. We had one group of individuals who, on their last day, really wanted to have big thick steaks and bottles of wine. They said, ‘Please join us.’ So we did. We had steak, potatoes and bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon with them.”

Besides the imaginative food, which incorporates red and green chiles, pine nuts, apricots and other ingredients native to the area, there were other Vista Clara attractions that were satisfying.

Chief among them was the land itself. Vista Clara means clear vision in Spanish, and when you slow down enough to observe the landscape, it is breathtaking. Visitors to New Mexico often comment on the spectaculcar quality of the light that illuminates the mesas and canyons--painters have flocked to the area since the 1920s. But at Vista Clara, guests find themselves exploring something even more intangible: the subtle yet powerful energies of the earth itself. The spa’s 80 acres are laden with quartz crystals, valued because of their ability, some believe, to amplify and purify energy on mental, physical, emotional and spiritual levels.

Because of the intense forces of nature at Vista Clara, the staff believes that a natural healing process is likely to occur for guests, whether they spend their days diligently hiking, exercising or being pampered in the therapy center. (Whatever you do, do not miss having a massage with Tanya Hammond, whose healing hands may be the greatest natural wonder in all of New Mexico.)

The mysterious elements of nature may also account for my favorite paradox regarding Vista Clara. It’s that Chris and Carmen Partridge, along with their remarkable staff, have put together a first-rate spa with virtually every detail exquisitely in place. This despite the fact that neither owner has ever set foot in any other health spa anywhere in the world.

At $2,300 a week or $1,150 for three days (plus 5% sales tax and an automatic payment of 15% for staff gratuities), some may think Vista Clara a bit on the expensive side. But even at these rates, it’s still priced at about $1,000 a week less than some of the other top spas throughout the country. About the only thing the owners appeared to have skimped on was the cotton-polyester blend T-shirts and sweats they provided guests each day, rather than workout gear made of 100% cotton.

But that’s a tiny complaint about an otherwise glorious experience. And come to think of it, maybe the Partridges’ lack of famliarity with other spas was not a detriment at all. Maybe that’s the reason they got Vista Clara so right.

GUIDEBOOK: Vista Clara Spa

Fast facts: Vista Clara is open 10 months a year, February through November. The spa is designed to accommodate a maximum of 14 men and women guests. A weekly program runs from Saturday noon to Saturday noon and is priced at $2,300, plus 5% sales tax and an automatic 15% added for staff gratuities. Three-day programs run from Wednesday noon to Saturday noon or from Saturday noon to Tuesday noon. Three-day programs are $1,150 plus 5% sales tax and 15% for gratuities.

Fares include meals, accommodations, pickup and return to the Albuquerque airport, use of workout wear, all exercise classes, educational programs and therapy sessions, including massages, facials and reflexology treatments.

Getting there: Southwest Airlines operates low-priced direct and nonstop flights between LAX and Albuquerque.

For more information: Call Vista Clara Spa and Health Retreat at (800) 247-0301.