Buen Camino

2020
Eau de Parfum
Carter Weeks Maddox - Chronotope

Autotheory Issues No. 1: A Perfume about Pilgrimage

Carter:  When I walked the Camino de Santiago, a 600-mile-long historic pilgrimage route that begins in the French Pyrenees and snakes its way across northern Spain, I developed trench rot in one foot and broke bones in the other by the end of my first week on the trail. Subsequent blood poisoning caused dozens of deep infections to bloom across my body, my weight dipped dangerously low, and though I wept and bled and walked for five long weeks, my spirits soared higher than ever before—a feeling that only doubled when my father joined me during the final week to ensure I finished pilgrimage in one piece. Pilgrims say “Buen camino” when we pass one another on the trail. And in this perfume, I’ve indiscriminately gathered the scents, pleasant and abject alike, from that final week on the ancient, meandering road as my father and I walked in the footsteps of millions of other pilgrims before us.

Dave: Medicinal lavender, sweet hay, warm asphalt - dry, liturgical frankincense and time-worn wood - emotional, dreamy, comforting.

Buen Camino Notes: Iberian lavender and immortelle, bandages, antiseptic, infections, asphalt, dust, sweat, grime, almond torte, orange, delirium accord, cathedral interiors, holy incense, espresso, star anise, hinoki wood, civet.