I’m greeted with an icy lemongrass-scented towel and a cool glass of ginger and lemongrass tea in a pavilion above a koi-filled lake. Birds twitter as a light breeze soughs through the trees. I’ve arrived at Chiva-Som, a 58-room health and wellness retreat near Hua Hin on Thailand’s gulf coast that offers comprehensive fitness programs, spa and light medical treatments.

I’m transported by golf cart along winding pathways through shady gardens to drop off my luggage in a serene dark wood traditional Thai villa. Then we scoot past massive banyan trees to the spa and health center for my initial consultation. My therapist tells me my blood pressure is a bit high and begins circling yoga and aerobics classes on the weekly schedule.

I have four days to transform my health. I begin with a back, neck and shoulder massage that de-stresses my road-weary body and erases my anxiety about whether or not I’ve selected the right treatments from the 117-page treatment menu.

The next morning, I take a stretch class and a water aerobics class, then make my way to the beachfront restaurant for salad and grilled fish with spicy cucumber dip. As people lounge in chaises around the pool, and a few hardy souls gather on the beach for boot camp, I head for a floor Pilates class followed by a Thai herbal massage. I get in a quick nap before dinner and an Oriental Stress Management seminar, which almost seems unnecessary now.

The staff here have embraced me without reservations. A spa attendant who watched me trip on a step after my massage the first day now wraps her hand lightly around my elbow and guides me around, laughing conspiratorially. The maid who cleans my villa artfully folds my pajamas as if they were Prada and places my book next to them. If I raise a hand ever so slightly in the restaurants, a waiter materializes.

The food is a mix of traditional Thai dishes and elegant Mediterranean cuisine. At Taste of Siam, the more casual beachfront café, coconut milk, ginger, lime, chilis, lemongrass and tamarind make everything taste rich and slightly naughty. Emerald specializes in more formal Mediterranean/fusion cuisine. Cooking classes include visits to the local market or to Chiva-Som’s own organic farm.

Brian Anderson, a chemistry professor who is Chiva-Som’s sustainable development coordinator, explains to me that social sustainability is as important at this resort as its push toward carbon neutrality or its organic farm, scrupulous recycling, solar panels and water conservation. Staff members and their families receive health coverage and scholarships, and they, in turn, visit schools to educate kids on health and the need to protect the development-stressed local ecosystem. The staff members’ fulfilling lives are reflected in the care they give guests.

I leave Chiva-Som wishing I’d stayed longer, but in significantly better condition than I was in when I arrived. The journey was well worth it, and the flight home is considerably shorter, thanks to the jet stream. chivasom.com

Los Angeles-based writer LAUREL DELP lived in Thailand as a child but never felt as much at home as she did at Chiva Som.

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Fashion designer Anna Cohen created this green wool cardigan, “Dreaming in Motion,” using Imperial Stock Ranch yarn. The Imperial Stock Ranch has been working with Oregon’s fiber artists and designers for 10 years.

We’d rather not think about it—especially when the fit is just right. Industrial clothing is made from pesticide-ridden and genetically modified cotton and treated with carcinogenic formaldehyde and flame retardants, then flown to the United States from China. Their production byproducts aren’t pretty.

Rebecca Burgess, a textile artist and indigo farmer in Marin County, California, couldn’t stop thinking about it. She believed people might be less tempted by mass-market fashion if they had more opportunities to buy clothing made in their communities from sustainably sourced materials. Would they build relationships with local alpaca ranchers and artisans, just as foodies bond with the farmers whose heirloom vegetables they adore? She had to find out. In 2010, Burgess announced that for one year she would clothe herself solely in garments made from materials sourced within 150 miles of her front door.

In Marin County, when Burgess began her project, locally produced clothing consisted of a scarf here, a sweater there. She couldn’t find anything to wear.

After wearing the same outfit for three weeks, Burgess got serious about changing her clothes. She raised $10,000 on Kickstarter.com and built the Fibershed Project (fibershedproject.com), a network uniting local organic cotton, sheep and alpaca farmers with mills, spinners, weavers and designers. The project has inspired similar co-ops throughout the country and now includes a national directory of small farmers and ranchers who provide wool, hemp, flax and nettles for “ranch to runway” fashions. Burgess’s definition of “local” has expanded to include sustainable producers across the United States. “For this to be successful, it can’t just be a marketplace of ideas,” she says. “It has to be a functioning marketplace.”

The “Starburst Shirt Dress” is from the Imperial Yarn 2011 Knit
Collection. Imperial Stock Ranch in Oregon has been sustainably raising
cattle and Columbia sheep for 140 years. Visit imperialstockranch.com
and imperialyarn.com.

Fibershed founder Rebecca Burgess challenged herself to live
for one year in clothes made from fibers sourced within a 150-mile
radius of her home. The sweater pattern shown here, and other
patterns from her one-year wardrobe, are available in the Fibershed
Marketplace at fibershed.com.

Knitters and spinners, are an important part of that marketplace, and they’re hungry for authentic materials. “In just the last three years, more than a quarter of our knitters have taken up spinning, and more and more they’re spinning fleece from locally grown sheep,” says Linda Ligon, who founded Interweave, the nation’s leading publisher of how-to crafts books and magazines, in 1975. “It’s really springing from the zeitgeist—local, handmade, back to the basics. I love that this is happening.”

Los Angeles-based writer LAUREL DELP is trying to convince her friends who just moved to the country that they need goats.

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