“Smoke drifts from the saddle. There are no stoves there.”
April. After the night rain. Air becomes clearer than glass.
You set out before dawn while the canyon still holds the night cold. Rain fell in the dark—and the air turned to glass: you can hear the drops dripping from pine needles onto stone. At the third turn of the path are someone else's tracks. Fresh, narrow, leading up. You follow them: lavender on the scree, a leaf rubbed in your fingers—bitter, green, almost citric. The tracks end at the stream. Ahead is only wet cedar, the warm smell of bark in the first sun, and thin smoke, though there has been no dwelling here for a long time. You stand and breathe. Downward, the tracks never returned.
“Snow still lay on the northern slope. The tracks led only upward.”
— from the field diary, №182
№ 182 from the perfumer's notebookspecifications
By noon the wind shifts, bringing from the depths of the canyon the smell of warm resin and dry earth. You find a spot where the stream disappears beneath the stones; the water here does not flow, but seeps through the moss, soundlessly. On a flat boulder by the water's edge lies a dropped folding knife with a broken blade—the steel darkened by dampness. You pick it up, it is heavy and cold. Around you smells of young pine needles, crushed lavender leaves, and something intangibly sweet, like wild honey of wild bees high in the cliffs. The sun is at its zenith, but the shadows under the pines remain blue and deep. You place the knife back, in the exact same spot, and turn back toward the valley. Dry cedar crackles underfoot.
