the air from here

All critters created by the LBJ Conser-clay-tion Club.

As I was last year around this time, I'm breathing Pacific Northwest air right now, remarking nearly every single time I step outside at how incredible it smells here, how you really forget that when you live here, how invigorating I find it, all this mountain-ocean-pine-ancient-glacier-freshest-coffee air. My husband usually breathes in deep and agrees, even though he has heard at least one hundred iterations of this monologue since we stepped outside at SeaTac and I exclaimed how even the airport-adjacent air, not traditionally known for its ability to invigorate, is better here. And it is!

LBJ Conser-clay-tion creation.

Better even than airport parking lot air is San Juan Island air, and that's what I've been fortunate enough to breathe these past few nights, gaping up at what seems like all of the stars between nearly all of the pine trees, dumbstruck by the beauty of this neon-mossed, pine-studded, sea-whipped island, wondering at how lucky we are just to get to walk around on this planet, and when we get to breathe in air that makes us feel especially alive it seems like too much almost, too bracing to keep even for one split second in our lungs.

LBJ Conser-clay-tion creation.

pining hard

Steep Ravine soap, Cascade Glacier essential oil, and solid perfume in Stag

My piney little haul, picked up in Seattle and pictured above, demonstrates how much I miss the Pacific Northwest. The air there! I was in Seattle all of last week, and on the day the snow finally melted and the wet ground warmed, I was hit with such a blast of green and ice and pine that I felt scrubbed and dizzy and brand-new. It's the opposite of being unable to catch your breath, it's all breath, all freshness. But real fresh, not cleaning solution or cosmetic "fresh," fresh instead like you've been breathing the wrong air for a while, like a gentle glacier just eroded five years from off your face. 

Juniper Ridge products really do come closest to that smell of smashed pine needles in your palm, and the Cascade Glacier oil is so brisk and beautiful that even the whiff off my fingertips from tightening the cap makes me feel like I've just come off an invigorating hike (the actual hikes I took while in Seattle last week were less of the invigorating nature-loving sort and more of the hiking-is-the-only-way-to-get-anywhere-in-town variety). The Stag fragrance is the solid perfume version of my beloved candle (this pine kick won't quit!) and Christen of Knows Perfume in West Seattle told me that the creators at Soap & Paper Factory thought she was joking when she asked them where the solid version of Stag was (solid perfume versions of the other candles in this series were already available), and that when she convinced them that she wasn't kidding, they put it into production for her. Christen told them, "This is Seattle. We want to smell like trees here."