I’ve been on the East Coast all week. The weather has not been ideal, but it’s still a treat to experience fall in New England. I took a train between New York and Boston and watched the water and the little towns go by. I went to visit a friend who lives in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, in the most adorable small house with a wood stove, surrounded my nearly an acre of land with a tiny cemetery on it. As always, I admired the flat salt marshes of the southern shore that seem to merge into the ocean, the simple American colonial homes that look so cozy, and the bright red cranberry bogs that flash by as I drove the back roads.

Yesterday I went to the Daniel Webster Wildlife Refuge in Marshfield, where my brother and his family live, and tramped around fields and forests in windy, overcast weather for a good hour and a half without seeing another soul. I was reminded again that I would really love a perfume that mimicked the ineffable and bittersweet scent of decomposing leaves in the autumn forest—it would be like capturing time in a bottle. (According to suggestions on the Internet, a few fragrances do come close.)

I did pick up a new perfume when I was in New York. I stopped by Love Adorned in Nolita, and after inquiring about the price of a vintage gold ring in the shape of a lizard (which turned out to be, um, beyond my price range), I turned my attention to the much more affordable fragrances. I’d sniffed several in the Brooklyn-based D.S. & Durga line before, but while they were all complex and interesting, none really grabbed me. And none were really grabbing me in the store either. It was only after walking around the neighborhood a little more and repeatedly sniffing the Coriander on my wrist that it won me over. It’s definitely a green scent, which I don’t usually care for, but also spicy, deep, and mysterious–much like the nature of autumn. I’ll probably be wearing this exclusively for the rest of the year.

Hope you are able to take the time to breathe in the scents of autumn this year.