Mûir(e) Wood Shaving Soap

John Muir, for whom the famed national park "Muir Woods" is named, was a driven man. He loved nature so much that he crusaded for decades to preserve it, founding the Sierra Club and establishing national parks at Yosemite and the Sequoia National Forest, which inspired the conservation of other natural wonders all over the United States. He was so outspoken and persuasive that no less than Ansel Adams, perhaps the greatest nature photographer of the 20th Century, regarded him as a direct influence and inspiration for his work.

In keeping with Muir's love of the forests, we've attempted to capture the crepuscular gloom of the woods at dusk, all purples and greens and blues. Blackberry seemed a perfect choice to blend with the jammy resin of balsam fir, while oakmoss and vetiver lace the undergrowth, imparting earthy mossiness and wood. The scent of damp air, so common in the Pacific Northwest where Muir made his home, wends its way through the fragrance, leaving a hauntingly gossamer shimmer in its wake. Not so much as photorealistic fragrance as an inspired color impression, suffused with the indigo of the dusky woods, Mûir(e) Wood is a tribute to one of our great forefathers in a strikingly unconventional manner, a memorial to a man who went to live in Nature and only came back to tell us of the wonders he had seen. La mûre may be French for blackberry, but the man himself is the inspiration. His contemplative approach to the world, so reminiscent of our own wet shaving rituals, is best expressed in words to others:

"To sit in solitude, to think in solitude with only the music of the stream and the cedar to break the flow of silence, there lies the value of wilderness." - John Muir