April 29, 2014

Piñon perfume: Lunar Amulet for 4-29-14 New Moon

Last month I visited New Mexico, where Garnet and I worked on new perfume amulet designs in between hiking through sagebrush and Piñon trees! Taos is certainly the land of sage, as you can see in this photo from the last time I was here in 2009. Taos is filled with a spiritual energy that the unaltered landscape holds deep within it. The rest of my time there we spent in Santa Fe, and I was glad to arrive pre-tourist season because as soon as I arrived the world seemed to go back into fast motion, not stand still like in the mountains of Taos. We had a fireplace every night with Piñon logs burning, and Garnet wanted to be able to wear the sweet, uplifting scent of this tree that she had come to associate with her year living in Santa Fe. So we went out for a walk one day to take photos of products while gathering resin that had poured out of abrasions in the tree trunks and dried into incense. I brought the resin home and got to work infusing it into an oil base, then added some essential oil distilled from the wood. This solid Piñon perfume is sweet and mellow, and although it doesn't last long, it is able to do amazing things to my mood and my state of consciousness in the time that it dances across my skin.