Oriades Boreales from Esprit de la Nature

The Oreiades were the Greek nymphs of mountains, cliffs, forests...

A cool, conifer forest incense smelling of fresh air and deep mats of lichens This is the aroma of deep wilderness: resinous, mineral, and quietly alive.  Ingredients  (all wildcrafted):  Black Spruce Resin and Needles, Balsam Fir Needles and bark, Red Spruce Resin Juniper needles and wood, Lichens, Labrador Tea.  In- house Black Spruce and Balsam Fir extracts

There are powerful presences high in the mountains. I live among the gentler low-land Appalachian ranges, yet a few times each year I travel north into the higher Laurentians, to places such as Mont Tremblant. The name “Tremblant” is French but comes from Indigenous traditions describing the mountain as spiritually powerful, trembling with presence. The Indigenous communities called the peak Manitonga Soutana (or Manitou Ewitchi Saga), which roughly translates to "Mountain of the Spirits". They told ancient legends that the mountain would shake or emit rumbling sounds when humans disturbed nature.

As far as I understand, most First Nations traditions engage directly with the spirits of the land, and do not gather all the spirits beneath a single collective name.  The Greeks, however, did have a name for the spirits of high mountains: the Oreiades. These were the nymphs of mountains, cliffs, conifer forests, and high rocky valleys. They were not gentle woodland spirits in the cozy sense, but beings of elevated, wind-exposed places where forest thins into stone. Much like the presences felt in the Boreal Forest among spruces, mist, lichens, endless ridges of dark trees and the liminal black water bogs.

The Greek Oreiades were described as wild, elusive, and not entirely human in temperament. Standing in the high places of the Boreal can I feel this same energy. Sound also carries strangely in the mountains, and the Oreiades were associated with echoes, wind, and falling stone. My favorite among them is Echo, whose voice lingers through cliffs and valleys, whose presence is felt, but never fully seen. The high forests of the North seem inhabited by something equally elusive, ancient, watchful, and just beyond sight.  I think of those presences as the Oriades Boréales.

Together, they create a scent-scape that is wild almost feral.  Black and Red Spruces release sharp, green aromas into the thin mountain air tempered by the jammy sweetness of Balsam Fir.  Deep beds of pale reindeer lichen add an almost mineral scent. Beneath this lies the damp aroma of peat, moss, wet stone, and dark earth slowly breathing upward. Labrador tea drifts along the edges of the forest with its spicy, honied, hemp-like herbal fragrance.  This is the aroma of deep wilderness: resinous, mineral, and quietly alive.  It is the Oriades Boréales

This price is for 13 perfect pellets nested in Conifer needles in a Black tin