Now here’s a surprising story: an avid hiker and outdoorsman, started a worldwide fragrance business. Hall Newbegin started in the late 90’s: hiking, gathering plants, making natural fragrances, and start selling them. Now he’s got a whole team surrounding him and bringing the smell of the outdoors available to hikers and homebodies.
The Juniper Ridge team goes out on hiking trips throughout the American West Coast to collect plants, bark, moss, mushrooms, and tree trimmings. Along the way, or in their Oakland based workshop, they distill all these plants into fragrances.
Each fragrance comes out somewhat differently, depending on the season, rainfall, temperature, and other surprises nature can come up with. You can read on their website what exactly went into your fragrance, where the ingredients have been collected, and by whom.
This is where you can also find the harvest stories, a recommended read even if you are no fan of the outdoors. (Yes you guessed it, that’s me, I do enjoy writing about it though!). Here you can dream away with tales of all the things the hikers/fragrance makers encounter on their trips. Such as: “The mountain opens up with this gorgeous, sweet, earthy, fertile smell”. And “It’s a different world down here—cool and wet—and the air is spicy-sweet with Bay Laurel”. Gosh this makes me want to go hiking – or maybe just go get myself a bottle.