I was a weirdly mystical kid and still am

When I was 3-4 years old I lived in Austin Texas and our neighbors were a kind elderly couple (at least they seemed elderly to me) and had a moon vine in their backyard. I used to pee on it regularly in the evenings because I had some weirdly mystical connection with the moon (my first joke when I was nine months old was about the full moon) and we made a ritual of it. I can still remember doing it and it made perfect sense at the time. I would say I was fertilizing it - which is less weird if you know my parents were both scientists who taught me a lot at an early age.

I was a weirdly mystical kid. One of my earliest memories was walking on a stone jetty in Aransas Pass and running ahead of my parents bc they were too slow and I was really excited. This was when I was two or three and I remember my mom telling me to watch out for snakes 🐍 but kudos to my parents for allowing me the autonomy to have these experiences and for giving me an understanding of the world that made me unafraid and endlessly curious about nature.

I climbed down to a tide pool and there were several black snakes, but when I looked at them I felt an immediate connection. I knew they wouldn’t hurt me and I held out my hand. I remember their tongues flicking in and out as they smelled it and, knowing me, I probably talked to them.

Then I remember running back to my parents excitedly “I met the snakes and they licked my hand!!!” - which completely freaked my parents out bc they were obviously water moccasins. I don’t think they actually licked me but I remember experiencing a deep sense of connection, they were my friends and I realized they meant me no harm. They smelled me and accepted me.

Another of my early memories, also deeply symbolic, was of visiting a goat ranch owned by a lesbian couple, Anne and Becky. If you know of them, please lmk. There was a cave off the side of a trail with a really low entrance where goats would go to die and I was the only one small enough to crawl inside.

Inside the cave there were goat bones and I found a huge calcite crystal on a ledge. I took several vertebrae and a couple skulls and crawled back out into the light.

Later that evening there was a huge bonfire. I’ve always been fascinated by fires, I’m usually the person tending it and I’m good at building them and keeping them going. This one was particularly large and memorable. I remember someone threw a spray can in and everyone scattering.

Texas was a wild place to be a kid in the early ‘70s. When my family moved to St Louis in 1974 everything seemed gray and boring in comparison. But I learned to create my own imaginary experiences and became the leader of our neighborhood gang, which would build forts in my backyard and have massive fights with clay dust that would make the entire block hazy. The soil in St Louis is clay under a shallow layer of topsoil and that earthy petrichor and mushroomy definitely left an impression that’s had a huge influence on my approach to perfumery, something probably most obvious in Ashes and Ceremony, but also Lost In Time, Côte and several others. It’s probably why I love natural vetiver so much and use so many specific varieties - because unlike patchouli, which is an aged leaf oil with earthy qualities, vetiver is a root that absorbs the ‘terroir’ like no other and also varies wildly depending on how it’s extracted.