Berryessa Snow Mountain's Push To Be National Monument Helped By Perfume Company

CLEARLAKE OAKS (CBS13) – The folks at Juniper Ridge aren't your typical perfume production people.

"Wilderness perfumes aren't just some inspiration of a place, they are in fact the place," said Chief Storyteller Obi Kauffman.

And the proof is in the process.

"In every single one of our bottles, you can find between 8, 10, sometimes upwards of 15 different native plants," Kauffman said.

Each scent is extracted via steam distillation.

"We've got the plants boiling in water. We're pushing the steam up through the column and then we're recondensing it into liquid form," Kauffman said. "Inside that condensed water, that steamed hydrosol, is a little bit of essential oil and that's the gold that we are going after."

It's an ancient technique used nowhere else in the world but right here in Northern California.

"The Berryessa Snow Mountain region is a very unique area of California. We consider it the undiscovered landscape," said Sara Husby, who is the National Monument campaign director of the conservation group Tuleyome.

Which is why conservationists are working with groups like Juniper Ridge to make sure the place is presidentially protected for future generations.

For while what these guys do is unlike no other, they want to make sure everyone still has the chance to see it for themselves.

"Juniper Ridge is able to bring the Berryessa Snow Mountain region and other places to the rest of the folks who may not be able to make it out to these regions," Husby said.

Because even they know while their creations evoke the senses, nothing beats the real thing.

"That stillness of the mountains. That sort of helpless kind of love of these wild landscapes of the American West is the thing that continues to inspire us," Kauffman said.

The Tuleyome organization hopes the Berryessa Snow Mountain region will get presidential designation as the state's next national monument soon.