I have spent a slightly ridiculous amount of my life thinking about what Tofino smells like. After years of making scent here, though, I think I’ve finally landed on an answer: there is no such thing as the smell of Tofino.

I know that’s a funny thing for someone who has built a business around place-based scent to say, but I believe it. Tofino doesn’t smell like cedar. It doesn’t smell like fir. It certainly doesn’t smell like whatever has collectively been decided a “West Coast” candle should smell like. Tofino smells different depending on where you are, what month it is, whether it has been raining for four days or the sun has unexpectedly come out, what’s growing around you, what the tide is doing and, perhaps most importantly, what this place means to you.

That last part has taken me years to understand.

When I first started making products here, I wasn’t consciously trying to create a scent vocabulary for the West Coast. I was just using what was around me and making things I liked. I spent some of those early years working out of the little kitchen at the old Tofino Botanical Gardens, surrounded by rosemary, mint, calendula, spruce tips, cedar and wet earth. Those ingredients slowly worked their way into what I was making, and eventually into On the Inlet, the rosemary, mint, lavender and cedarwood blend that became one of the scents that built The Hobbyist.

Looking back, I can see something I couldn't see then: I wasn't making something that smelled like Tofino. I was making something that smelled like my life in Tofino.

There is a big difference.

I think we've oversimplified what the West Coast smells like

Somewhere along the way, “West Coast” became a fragrance category. Cedar. Fir. Smoke. Moss. Maybe something salty. Put them in an amber jar, give it a moody name and we all understand the assignment.

I don't think that's necessarily wrong. Those smells absolutely exist here. But after living here, walking these beaches and forests, raising my family here and making scent here for years, I think it's a pretty narrow interpretation of this place.

A forest, for example, doesn't just smell like fir. If you actually stop and pay attention, the smell changes as you move through it. There are bright green needles and new growth, but there is also old cedar, exposed wood, moss, roots, damp soil and everything decomposing underneath your feet. After rain, the whole thing changes again. On a warm day, it changes again.

That's why Forest Bathing couldn't just be fir. I use fir and pine for that recognizable green opening, but cedarwood, sandalwood and vetiver give the blend the deeper, darker, earthy notes underneath it. I wasn't trying to make a fragrance that would make someone say, Oh, that smells like a Christmas tree. I wanted that moment when you walk far enough into the forest that the road disappears and everything becomes quieter.

That's a much harder thing to formulate.

It's also why I don't believe there is a universal formula for a “forest scent.” My forest isn't necessarily your forest. My relationship with these particular trees, in this particular place, is part of what I'm putting into it.

You can explore the Forest Bathing collection here.

The ocean doesn't smell like an ocean candle

I will die on this hill: the beach does not smell like “ocean breeze.”

At least, not here.

The Pacific coast where I live can smell cold and green, woody and earthy. There is salt, of course, but there are also trees growing almost to the shoreline, wet driftwood, seaweed, sand, rain, vegetation and that incredibly fresh smell the air gets when the weather changes.

And strangely, when I think about the smell of the beach, some of my strongest memories are actually of coming home from it.

Walking through the door freezing cold, dropping wet clothes somewhere they shouldn't be, turning the shower as hot as I can stand it and feeling my body finally warm up again. The steam, the eucalyptus, the wet hair and that feeling of being completely exhausted in the best possible way.

That memory became part of By the Sea Shore, which is one of the simplest blends I make: fir needle, Bulgarian lavender and eucalyptus. The fir gives it its green backbone, lavender softens it and eucalyptus creates the cool, open airiness I associate with being outside here.

There are only three oils in it, but I've never believed complexity automatically makes a scent better. If three ingredients can take me somewhere, I don't need eight.

This is the By the Sea Shore collection.

And not everything here is dark, rainy and covered in moss

This might be my other unpopular West Coast scent opinion.

I love the moody version of Tofino. I live for the rain coming sideways, the fire going, soup on the stove and a candle burning at three in the afternoon. But that's not the whole place either.

Sometimes Tofino smells bright.

Long Beach is lemon and lavender, and it's intentionally uncomplicated. It reminds me of exactly where we are right now in September. Summer is supposedly ending, the town is getting quieter and everyone is beginning to pull their sweaters back out—and then we get one of those ridiculous sunny afternoons. The beach is almost empty, the sun is warm enough that you've abandoned your jacket somewhere, and for a few hours you wonder whether summer is actually over at all.

That belongs in my version of the West Coast just as much as cedar and rain do.

You can find Long Beach here.

So how do you turn a place into a scent?

I don't think you do.

Not really.

I couldn't hand you a bottle containing Tofino any more than I could hand you a bottle containing your childhood kitchen, your grandmother's house or the place you spent your summers when you were twelve.

What I can do is pay very close attention.

After all these years, that has probably become the most important part of my work. Before I start thinking about which oils work together, I'm usually thinking about what I'm trying to remember. Is the place warm or cold? What's growing there? What do I notice first? What's underneath that? What changes after it rains? What part of the memory am I actually trying to capture?

And sometimes the answer isn't botanical at all.

Maybe what I'm trying to capture is the feeling of finally getting warm after being cold all afternoon. Maybe it's walking into the forest and realizing I can't hear anything except birds and my own feet. Maybe it's September sunshine on Long Beach. Maybe it's standing in a little kitchen at the Botanical Gardens surrounded by plants, having absolutely no idea that the things I'm smelling every day will eventually become part of a business.

That's why I don't think what we make at The Hobbyist can be replicated.

Someone could analyze every scent I make. They could buy the same essential oils. They could put rosemary, mint, lavender and cedarwood into a bottle in exactly the same proportions.

But they couldn't recreate why I put them together in the first place.

They weren't standing where I was standing.

They don't have my memories.

They haven't lived my version of this place.

And I think that's the difference between making something that smells good and making something that smells like somewhere.

Maybe scent isn't really about smell at all

The older I get, the more interested I am in this.

We talk about fragrance as though our preferences are objective: I like cedar. I hate patchouli. I love lavender. But I don't think scent works quite that neatly. We attach smells to people, places and periods of our lives, often without realizing we're doing it.

Then years later, we encounter that smell again and we're back there before we've even had time to think about it.

Maybe your version of home is coffee brewing early in the morning. Maybe it's tomato plants in a greenhouse, laundry dried outside, woodsmoke, sunscreen, your dad's workshop or the soap that sat beside your grandmother's sink.

Mine happens to contain a lot of cedar, rosemary, wet earth, fir, lavender and salt air.

That's what makes scent so personal, and it's why I don't actually want The Hobbyist to define what Tofino smells like for anyone.

I can only tell you what my Tofino smells like.

The interesting question is: what does yours smell like?

If you'd like to experience the four very different pieces of this place that inspired On the Inlet, Forest Bathing, By the Sea Shore and Long Beach, I've brought each scent together in our Small Batch Beach Bundles. They're different interpretations of the same coastline, experienced through candlelight, soap, bath water and scent.

Not Tofino bottled.

Just a few pieces of the place I've spent years paying attention to.

One place. One scent. A handful of ways to experience it.

Tam xo