Pineta

This post is about sources of inspiration. I figured it out while jogging yesterday in the woods, doing my usual Sunday jogging thing, with an unusual transpiration, though. It was quite hot and humid leading to a somewhat tough ride. On my jogging round there is one spot in the wood, exposed towards south with some pine trees, fully exposed to the sun, quite tricky to pass by because there are lots of pine roots making a decent jogging somewhat difficult. When I am there, about 50% of the jogging distance lays behind me, thus I am already quite pumped up with soothing body hormones, allowing to forget misery. What is special about this few meters square spot: It smells like the pineta. The pine wood line between the sea coast and the land, as you find it in Italy or in southern France.

My associations with pineta are: Vacation, Mediterranean Sea, dry sand enriched with the warm scent of fir, or pine resin. And, as a quick check on Google tells me: I am not the only one. Google.ch delivers a camping place add if I enter pineta. Hence, google’s advertisement might also be an association check… let’s do a test and see what ads we get when we enter “mountain” on google.com: Nothing. But a hyperlink to brokeback mountain comes up. Therefore, let’s try brokeback mountain…. And again: No ad. Hmmmm…. And this is exactly how I work: Starting with something serious, ending on google, and thinking about placing an ad, that pops up when people enter “brokeback mountain”….for Lonestar Memories, of course.

Back to the pineta. Thus, while stumbling in a mini-version of this wonderful scent scenery, I figured out there is something in it that I could use with my lavender idea, this fresh resin, which is partly woody, partly spicy, dry, not green but complementing green lines. Chance wants it that I just got my hand on a molecule that will help me to bring this out: Nopylacetate. Fresh, spruce-pine-fir like but not fully bringing up the associations that fir brings around: Car fragrance, cheap Christmas scents and the freshness of forests in a bathroom spray.

(pix: http://www.racine.ra.it/provincia/prociv/pineta.jpg)