L+L Candles: Fall 2022 Fernweh Collection Launch l the HIKE l New York l The Story Behind the Candle

The HIKE candle, a refreshing outdoor woodsy blend, is the first of our Fernweh Collection to launch in Brooklyn, New York. This candle carries a scent profile of pine, fir, spruce, juniper, cypress and cedar. With these notes, it’s impossible not to feel like your feet are taking that first exhilarating step onto a hiking trail and filling your lungs with crisp air. This candle is the freshly-cut smell of Christmas trees, and it immediately invites you to create a cozy ambience for a quiet winter evening by a fire.

Bill Bryson in A Walk in the Woods, writes, “Woods are not like other spaces…Stand in a desert or prairie and you know you are in a big space. Stand in the woods and you only sense it. They are a vast, featureless nowhere. And they are alive.” The HIKE candle is the essence of these woods that Bryson ruminates about.

Our candle was created with upstate New York in mind, the Catskills, Hudson Valley, and the weekend we got engaged. I thought we were going upstate for the weekend because I’d been eager to get out of Brooklyn and hike near the Catskills. We needed a break from city life and to find our “nowhere” in nature for a few days. Lukas had rented us a charming 1850s rustic barn (572 Plutarch Road, Highland, NY 12528) on an idyllic former farm. It was magical. The perfect place for the much bigger plans Lukas had in mind that weekend. He proposed on a bench on the farm under a weeping willow tree, looking out at a sea of cat-tails. The next day, we hiked Millbrook Ridge of the Mohonk Preserve, which is a nature preserve in the Shawangunk Ridge, 90 miles north of New York City in the Catskill Mountains. As we hiked that day, we came across signs that prohibited rock climbing in certain areas because falcons were nesting. We watched as the falcons circled in the sky above us, called out to each other, and landed on cliffs nearby. They too were building a home.

When Lukas and I had first met each other, we both had the sense that we’d waited for each other most of our lives. We immediately recognized the feeling of being home after having traveled far and wide to get there. We had both lived in New York City since we were teenagers. In sharing stories, we realized that we were often in the same corners of the city around the same time, frequently visiting the same places. We like to think our paths crossed many times before we were finally pulled into each other's orbit last fall, when we decided to meet for coffee in Park Slope, Brooklyn. In each other, we recognized the feeling of fernweh.

Our Fernweh Collection (of which the HIKE candle is the first to launch) is inspired by the wonderful, untranslatable German word fernweh that describes the feeling of homesickness for a distant land, a place you've never been, and yet it is already of you. It is the ache so strong to escape and discover new places, it bears the weight of an almost sadness. And the search for it, is in distant lands and far within yourself.

With the Proust Effect of “Evergreen trees and Wanderlust” this upstate-inspired New York candle invites all who light it to wander and roam, to get lost within oneself and within each other. In the HIKE candle, we are reminded of what Rebecca Solnit writes in A Field Guide to Getting Lost, “…to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender."

The HIKE candle currently comes in two sizes: a matte black, luxurious 10oz vessel and a 8oz matte black metal tin that is perfect to toss into any travel bag. The candle is made with a soy blend wax, and is vegan, non toxic and eco-friendly. With this candle, we encourage you to seek adventure.

If you are looking for a quaint bookshop to browse and potentially purchase a copy of the books mentioned here, we recommend a local favorite: Community Bookstore at 143 7th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11215. Or if you are in the Catskills hiking, we recommend the lovely: Inquiring Minds Bookstore at 6 Church Street, New Paltz, NY 12561.

Happy trails.

Each candle is hand poured with love in our Brooklyn, NY kitchen with our two daughters by our side.