You know how when you go camping in the woods, and the ground is a little damp and soft and strewn with pine needles, and the sunlight filters through the trees, and your clothes smell like woodsmoke from the campfire last night, and it’s very quiet, and the only sounds for miles around seems to be an occasional bird call overhead, the drowsy buzzing of insects, and the crunch, crunch of your boots on the path?

Silent Light smells like that.

photo via GoldenPotion

I’m not really a fan of what I sometimes think of as “hippie oils,” the patchouli- and sandalwood-heavy ones you find at street fairs and at health food stores. But I am a sucker for woodsy scents, and Silent Light opens with Palo Santo, which a quick Google search informs me is “a mystical tree that grows on the coast of South America and is related to Frankincense, Myrrh and Copal. . . . It is part of the citrus family and has sweet notes of pine, mint and lemon.”  Copal is another element in Silent Light and apparently also a favorite of mine–I don’t like incense, but after being exposed to copal incense at my hotel in Tulum this spring (they burned it in the communal bathrooms–it’s quite effective, I might add), I ended up buying some.

Perfume oils are a nice change for summer–lighter and less overwhelming than alcohol-based perfumes. They tend to be made of more natural ingredients as well–GoldenPotion oils are all custom-made by the owner using natural extracts, coconut oil, and organic ingredients when possible.

Lately I’m channeling my inner outdoorsy-loving side more and more, which is really challenging my image of myself. It turns out that I love kayaking! Who knew. So maybe this scent is speaking to this newly discovered part of me. However, if I start wearing socks with Birkenstocks and lots of Lycra and fleece when I’m not actually doing outdoor-type things, you have my permission to knock me upside the head.