I have said it before. I’ll say it again. Any season is a great season for enjoying an organic, hand poured candle. In winter, as we celebrate the beginning of a new year or reflect on the past one, candles provide a kind of companionship for our contemplation. They fill the room with light and aroma that can help as the mind wanders, plans, and resolves.
As the air goes from chilly to down-right cold, it loses so much natural aroma, doesn’t it? You don’t have to live in a snow covered climate to have noticed that the icy breeze and the leafless trees strip the scents from the air. Bridge Nine candles can transport you from winter to spring in many ways. Burn the Cascade Forest scent, and it doesn’t matter what season it actually is. You will smell new-growth, earth, moss, fir.
While summer nights and early fall evenings are a nice compliment to the glow of a candle, a winter day beckons the lighting of a flame – a stark contrast to grey skies or snow blanketed yards. The mood of an entire house can be changed when you light the wick. The home goes from eerie, dark, and quiet to full, warm, and inviting. It’s a little bit of magic, or some harkening to the importance of fire in our distant ancestral pasts. Whatever the reason, the glow of a flame is an antidote to the winter blues.
When it is too wet and cold to hike in the forests or hillsides around the Pacific Northwest, I find myself reading. There is so little in the world that can compare to the feeling of opening a new book as you pull a warm blanket over your legs and settle into the couch. It’s bliss. Before I recline, I pull the window shades enough to let in some natural light and I find the perfect scented candle to match my mood or to fill the room with the aura I’m seeking. Now, when I think back on the books I’ve been enjoying, I can still mentally pair the smell and feel of the room to the ambiance the book inspired.
Winter can be such a reflective time. I look back at the great year I’ve just had, and then I look forward with anticipation and optimism toward the year to come. Soon, I’ll be another year older – another journey around the sun completed. And not so long after that, the first flowers of spring, the snowdrops, will poke their sleepy heads from the soil of slumber to greet the warm sun. Until then, there are good books on the shelf, warm drinks to be, and blankets to lay under. Through it all there are these magical candles, imbuing the atmosphere with their glow and aroma.
A quick word on properly and safely burning your candle. Don’t fall asleep with the candle burning. All those winter days spent inside reading under a blanket are conducive to dozing off, so keep the flame closeby, where you can extinguish it if you start to get tired. Never leave a burning candle unattended.