It began with a copper distiller, a piece of family farm land, and a desire to remember how to heal through the ancient ways of perfume.
Through 15 years of trial and error, seeding and farming, extracting and blending, scents slowly came together with community to form a collection of perfumes and stories that mirror the land.
Here is a harmony of people, plants, animals, and earth elements. Memories, we all share, of the places in nature, we seek to restore, honor, and protect.
By making sacred healing aromatics that reflect the beauty of nature, we remember who we are in our oldest, and most unadulterated state. We touch in with the river graced by the bees of early spring, with the desert, blue with dawn light and the scent of juniper, and we welcome ourselves back to the places where the fields bank up against the forest, where sweet grasses and green conifers exchange ideas in the form of perfume.
This journey into the aromatic world is one I would take you on, to show you the beauty and wonder of what I have seen during this healing immersion into what I love most. I would share of the ways in which animals and people respond to well-loved perfume, the ways in which anger and pain can soften when remembering the sweetness of past flowers and the loved ones bearing their names and memories. Or the way the heart begins to behave like the garden we grow, full of bees on golden poplar, bears circling cedar, rose and lily fawning inside laughter and iris-light....
These bottles and jars are gateways, and each offering, whether it be story or silk, amber or incense, is alive with old dreams and directives on how to hold ourselves wisely in this rapidly changing world. The perfumes speak of stewardship, of taking little and offering back much, of digging to plant instead of digging to pluck.
Inside the stories are blankets of fragrance and pathways towards making gardens of perfume to distill slowly, carefully, in glass or metal, with birds and spirits watching over, with mountains speaking through in tongues of weather and lightning, heartwood and heat, sun and inner light. We can extract aromatics ethically, without hurting what we love in the process. Through thoughtful planting, and careful co-distillation, we practice respect for the earth by making perfume gardens. These gardens become homes for the pollinators we all love so much, as well as shrines for the most beautiful parts of our souls.
Here we believe that what is oldest and most capable, dwells in each of us. Offerings are made as smoke of incense, and as amber worn in the old way, giving light and love to those ancient spirits who dwell inside the gardens of our soul.
These perfumes are libraries of what we stand to lose, they are reconstructions of the forests and places that are being cut and destroyed for reasons each of us understands but struggle to change.
Here we listen to frog voices, and worship the resins wept from trees, fragrant with messages of climate change. We follow the seasons by following the plants and animals, always sniffing around for what may be blooming or brooding next. We wear the ancient amber of our olden forests because we are tree-growers, responsible for the protection of our sacred waters and seeds, and the symbols around our necks, wrists, and waists embody our beliefs, as they always have.
The aromatic companions are sacred medicine. They are fervent gifts from the earth thoughtfully hoping to bring you back to your own inner constellation of light and personal beauty.
Photo Credits:
Pic #1: Copper Still in Ring Family Lavender Field : Leanna Stern
Pic #2: Jessica Ring teaching on the Little Wind River, WA, June 2019: Jon Keyes
Pic #3 and 4#: Upper Clackamas River, Meadow and Cliffs: J. Ring
Pic #5 - IRis - J Ring
Pic #6 - Ring Family Farm - Leanna Stern
Pic #6 - Ring Family Hydrosol Garden - Seth Ring
*All Remaining Pics - Jessica Ring
