The Place That Made Everything

There were cedar bushes near the pool at the Whiteface Club, where I spent my summers as a kid.

I don't know why I started doing it — but I would reach in, crush a handful of leaves, and rub them on my wrists. That was my perfume. Cedar from the bushes by the lake, carried on my skin for the rest of the day.

I was probably seven or eight years old. I didn't know anything about essential oils or terpenes or what cedarwood does to the nervous system. I just knew it smelled like summer. Like belonging. Like exactly where I was supposed to be.

I grew up in Lake Placid. My family moved here when I was three, and the Adirondacks became the whole world to me. Six million acres of forest, lake, and mountain — and I was lucky enough to have it as my backyard.

Every season had a scent. Winter was skiing every Sunday at Whiteface with my dad — cold air, pine, the bite of frost. Summer was the lake club: lilac trees heavy with blossoms lining the walkways, hyacinths and daffodils everywhere, long days that stretched into starry nights with friends on the dock. Fall was the Great Camps with my dad — earthy moss, woodsmoke, the spice of birch logs crackling in a fire.

And every summer, there were hikes. My mom, my dad, my sister and I would head up into the mountains together. We carried clementines in our packs — the perfect trail food, sweet and bright. We climbed Mount Marcy and camped partway up. I remember waking before sunrise and watching the sky turn mandarin and rose over the highest peak in New York. The air at the top was full of pine and cedar, and underneath it all, the smell of dirt and moss at our feet.

That sunrise is still my favorite scent in the world. It became Mount Marcy — the fragrance.

That's really how all of this started.

Adirondack Chair is the feeling of sinking into a wooden chair at sunset, the lake going still and golden, the whole day finally exhaling. Balsam and Cedar is standing deep in the forest where the trees stretch so high you have to tilt your head back, and the air itself feels like medicine. White Birch is a campfire on a cool night, white birch logs crackling, sparks drifting up into the dark.

Lemon and Vanilla is Donnelly's ice cream — a Lake Placid tradition. Balsam and Clementine is every hike I ever took, a fresh-peeled clementine in hand, the summit ahead. Summer by the Lake is cannonballs off the dock at the Whiteface Club and laughing until it was too dark to see the water. Alpine Spice is the Great Camps — the moss, the woodsmoke, the flannel, the feeling that you are somewhere built to last.

I made these scents because I wanted to give people a way back to places like these. Not necessarily the Adirondacks specifically — though I hope you'll visit someday. But that feeling of a place. The kind of calm that comes from being somewhere that asks nothing of you except to breathe.

Scent is the fastest way to get there. It bypasses everything — the to-do list, the inbox, the noise — and takes you somewhere else in a single breath. A vacation for the mind. Not a week away, not even an hour. Just one moment where you are somewhere else, and your nervous system remembers what rest feels like.

The Adirondacks are called "Forever Wild" — it's written into the New York State Constitution, a promise that these mountains will be preserved and protected for the people who come after us. I love that. It's why we give back to the Adirondack Council, why our ingredients are clean, why we care about what goes into every product we make. You can't take something this beautiful and not feel an obligation to protect it.

I haven't hiked Mount Marcy in many years. But when I light a candle that smells like that sunrise — pine, cedar, the first warmth of morning citrus in the cold air — I'm back there. My shoulders drop. The noise goes quiet.

That's what I want for you too. Wherever your mountain is.

With love from Lake Placid,
Marcy