Who Makes Firn?

I love being outside. I love it sooo much that years ago at a family reunion, my older sister nicknamed me "Creepy Nature Girl". For me, this was a fantastic compliment and a badge to wear proudly!

As an Anthropology student, one of my favorite subjects was ethnobotany or the study of plants and people. I was especially interested in plant uses: medicinal (e.g. fertility control), recreational and spiritual (e.g. ritual aids), household (e.g. indigo and plant roots for dying textiles), and what I call "personal enhancement" (e.g. beauty products, like henna/mehndi).

I still think about the topic of plants and people, though the daydreaming has taken a slightly different path. Now, I think about all the opportunities we miss to experience the botanical world using our most animal sense: that of smell. Nothing sends us to another time or place like scent can!

How many hours per day do we spend indoors, inhaling sterile, windless air in a climate controlled environment? How often do we get to sniff at the fresh breeze of a forest, prairie, beach, or desert, titillating the brain's receptors to trigger distant collective memories? I want to help rewild humankind using my favorite (and in my opinion, most important!) sense.

The typical creative process of Firn goes something like this: I go somewhere wild to connect with the outdoors, smell something beautiful, and my mind tries to catalog it for safe keeping later. Once I’m home, I try to replicate the scent (or at least the feeling or memory it inspires) using plant materials. If I'm able to ethically harvest some of the plant matter in that area for distillation, tincturing, or infusion later, bonus! Sometimes I'm able to get pretty dang close to mimicking the scent, and other times the blend is more of a personal interpretation.

It's my hope that these fragrances strengthen your personal relationship to the natural world and inspire you to venture outside so that you, also, can re-connect with your animal subconscious.

If you’d like to get in touch, please email me at firnhandcrafted@gmail.com.