This is the real smell of California's central to southern coasts because this soap is made with real leaves of the sage plants which blanket the precipitous hillsides of the coastal mountains from Big Sur south to Baja California. White Sage, Black Sage, California Sage are a few of the sages used to make this distinctly coastal smelling soap. I wish I could capture the misty, salty smell of the air, then this soap would really have it all!

The California Bay Laurel has an impossibly strong scent that makes me think immediately of the lush, moss laden coastal canyons where it is most commonly found. While its spicy fragrance is wonderfully evocative and refreshing from a distance, crush a leaf under your nose and the sensation of your sinuses exploding is akin to doing a somersault in a swimming pool without a nose plug. Fortunately for you, I just use a little bit of the leaves in this soap so that you get the light, spicy, lemony fragrance without the somersault part.

California's high Sierra is perhaps the most widely loved and jealously guarded mountain range in America. Its deep heart of wilderness has been the fuel of inspiration for generations of wilderness activists including such greats as John Muir, Gary Snyder and David Brower. This soap smells like the Sierra because it is made from the spicy smelling leaves of Incense Cedar which blanket its western flanks. This is the real smell of warm summer evenings in the meadows along the Tuolumne river, or of stumbling out of your sleeping bag in the middle of the night, with the impossibly cold, wood-smoke Sierra air lighting up your senses.

If you've ever been to the Grand Canyon and nudged perilously close to the edge of a thousand foot drop-off and wondered what that insane tree clinging to the side of the cliff was, it was probably juniper. Juniper covers vast portions of the Southwest and seems happily at home clinging to small ledges on sheer Navajo sandstone cliffs or peeking up between boulders. This scent is the defining scent of the plateau and mesa country of the Southwest.

Also called "Ginger Cedar" for its highly unusual, spicy odor, Port Orford cedar is found only in the tangled knot of coastal mountains in northern California and southern Oregon known as the Klamath region. Its soothing odor is extremely evocative and was said to have strongly affected 19th century seamen who sailed schooners made from the fresh wood - "the odor grew and grew on them till they were almost made with with it" (Donald Peattie). I hope it doesn't drive you mad! While many soaps claim to be "cedar" scented, this soap is the only one you will find with the distinct smell of Port Orford Cedar and the distinct feeling of the gorgeous, rugged country of the Klamath region in which it grows.