Lessons in (al)chemistry

I used to have hobbies.

I don’t mean hiking or gardening, rock-collecting or cooking. These activities have so long been embedded in my life that they are just my life.

I mean add-ons, as in, per the definition of hobby, “an activity pursued for enjoyment during leisure time.” I had hobbies when I had leisure time.

I baked bread. I made candles. And soap. I sewed. I once knit an entire sweater. I batiked. I refinished furniture. I learned calligraphy. Then life got full and wonderfully complicated, and then it got maybe too full and too complicated, with marriage and three children, and my two full-time careers. What counts as “leisure time” given all that? Of course, I did “stuff” with the kids-- crafts, cooking experiments (pretzels, bagels) sports (fencing, kickball)--but my own hobbies disappeared.

Until now.

Announcing a new, cool hobby that one friend told me today brought me “even closer to witch status.” Which was a compliment. It’s creating essential oils through distillation using an Alembic copper still, apparatus that traces its origin back to Muslim alchemists of the 9th century. It looks like this:

Yes, almost too beautiful to use.

The process is both time-consuming and very simple. I love actually knowing and understanding a process, seeing it, hands-on creating it. There is so much in my life, in our lives, that is mysterious. Like touching a screen with a piece of plastic and having funds debited from an account. Like my phone talking to my car. Like how chatgpt has keen sense of humor. I. Don’t. Get. It.

My Alembic still, however, I get. It works like this: You gather the material. In this case, my son Jackson went foraging in the woods, found a western cedar, clipped some branches, then we clipped a bagful of needles. We packed the bottom of the still with the needles and poured in spring water. We set up hoses leading into and out of the condenser, one to bring in cool water, one to take out the water heated by the steam in the coils. And then we watched as the aromatic liquid with its traces of essential oils dripped from the port at the bottom of the condenser into a flask. We read that the penis bone of a raccoon is used for this purpose. As we were fresh out of penis bones, we used a piece of copper tubing.

We watched the drip. And watched. And then went off and do other things because this takes hours.

Meanwhile: The house smells like a spa. The copper still is a piece of art. The mother-son bonding is joyful. The two-ounce vial of oil is just a side benefit.