by Jeanne Mozier

For the first time in its decade-long history, the Spa Feast offered a bodywork treatment worthy of the event's name. Visitors lined up at Atasia Spa's table to sample their sugar scrub. I darted around urging them to try it. I had experience. I knew that Atasia's corner of the hall would soon smell like a fine bakery.

Two weeks earlier, I yielded to the pleas of Atasia's owner, master bodyworker Frankie Tan, and tried his latest menu addition. The rest of the day, people would turn their heads and sniff the air as I passed. Tentative smiles lit their faces. I knew they had visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads. I knew because I could smell it too -- the sweet aroma of sugar lingered on my arms and legs.

"Sugar is the hot substance on the spa circuit right now," said Patty Swisher who administered Atasia's sugar scrub treatment to my body. "It's replacing sea salt in pedicures and body scrubs." I could understand why. Who would want to smell like oceanfront when they could smell like a kitchen of just baked sugar cookies? Plus, rubbing sugar into a client's skin is much easier on the therapist's hands than salt, and it is neater. The floor always ends up littered with salt particles.

Most of the body treatments that arrived in Berkeley Springs, hotbed of the latest in spa services, were imaginable from their names. I was not surprised to be slathered in mud during the mud wrap or to have hot black rocks placed on key points of my body during a La Stone massage. It was hard to fathom how the sugar scrub could be what its name suggested, but it was. With the exfoliating treatment completed, I hurried home, stuck out my arm and announced to my husband: "lick me, I'm sweet." When I shared that prediction with those standing in line at the Spa Feast, none of them fled. Our visitors are a sophisticated crowd.

Tan designed a special room in his Asian-flavored spa for the treatments that require hosing down afterwards like the mud wrap and sugar scrub. It is outfitted with heat lamps and hoses and includes a uniquely constructed table with side gutters to allow the water and other fluids to drain easily.

Laying me on the table, Swisher started with one leg and then the other. She lubricated each body part with a slick fluid moisturizer that flowed from a hose then scrubbed it with liquid sugar that held enough grains to make working on my back the best scratching I had ever experienced. "Even with brushes, it's hard to get some places on your back," said Swisher, accurately interpreting my sighs of relief.

Once the sugar was applied, Swisher buffed me up with a loofah mitten, scraping off all that dead skin and leaving behind the alluring aroma. Finally she rinsed off each body part with the mineral spring water for which Berkeley Springs has been famous for centuries.

I could scarcely believe how smooth and silky my arm felt. No sticky residue. No glaze. My skin was baby soft and smelled of Mother Nature's most enticing product -- sugar.

Once the folks at the Bath House Health Center heard I sampled Atasia's treatment, they insisted I come and try THEIR sugar scrub and observe the difference.

It was different. I was able to choose my own sugar rub substance based on the essential oils it contained. Confronted with Enliven, Quiet or Ignite, I chose -- Ignite; "enhances the desire with a blend of sandalwood, sweet orange, frankincense and palmarosa," announced the label on the Babassu brand rub.

The table at the Bath House was layered with soft towels and pillows, heated from underneath. Cosmotologist Nancy Horton, who has made the study and treatment of skin her life's work, wet me down with hot towels, rubbed the sugar on with her hands and used them to massage the paste in until it disappeared, sugar crystals melting into my skin. The next step was to cover the sugared body part in a hot towel until it cooled off. Totally committed to smoothness, Horton then applied an unscented lotion on particularly rough spots like elbows, knees and my infamous duck's heels.

"The sugar scrub is so popular, we had to get bigger jars of the rub," said Horton. "People generally get the sugar scrub in a package with a facial." The Bath House also sells jars of the rub in their shop for folks who want to treat themselves with sugar at home.

The verdict? I liked the massage aspect of the Bath House's sugar scrub yet there was something missing. I didn't smell like a cookie. No one wanted to lick me. All was not lost however, I still felt like the smooth bottom of the Pillsbury Dough Boy.