We’ll start with: We don’t think this is racist?
For the longest time, I personally pigeon-holed burning incense along with wearing patchouli. It was something dreadlocked, Baja-wearing hippies did. But, be it due to a softening to unnecessary prejudices as I get older or a more general desire to seek out ways to chillax® as I get older…or just getting older, I am totally into incense now.
Katie got me a smaller incense burner a while back and, more recently, we picked up this adobe teepee burner from the same company, Incienso de Santa Fe. An incense company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico (thank you, Spanish class), Incienso de Santa Fe creates “incense that is unique to the Southwestern United States,” using the native area woods to formulate their fragrances found “nowhere else but in the west.”
Having lived in California “officially” for a year now, I have to back up the company’s claim. The west, like the east, does have geographically specific scents that we’ll suddenly stumble across when we’re out hiking or even just walking through our neighborhood, Beachwood Canyon. Smells of dry brush; hedges of lavender; smokey, dusty hills—all of it’s started to come to smell like home to us and Incienso’s products call up place and time with their scents in a warm, comforting way. As they put it:
“People tell us our incense makes them remember all kinds of wonderful things…the perfume of the Painted Desert, a crackling campfire on a high mountain trail, the morning mist settling in a Northern New Mexican village. If you have not tried our fragrances before, we know you will find them very special.”
We kind of just like how burning their incense snaps us into a more tranquil place at the end of a long day. As the company spells out on their site, they use only dead trees for their incense—no trees are cut down for their products. And, as you can see from their Web site, they offer a wide range of incense scents (from piñon to mesquite to hickory) + themed burners (from chimineas to steam engines to tiny southwestern churches).
So, if you’re looking for a last-minute gift, we’d suggest these guys. They’re reasonably priced, unique, and go a long way to bringing some warmth into your winter.
