Both Sides Now: A Sunrise, A Sunset, and the Light That Never Leaves

When dusk settles over the Bitterroot, the mountains become an obsidian spine against a horizon of marigold, persimmon, and copper. In the quiet of the studio, Judy Collins sings Both Sides, Now.

There is something about hearing that song after enough seasons have passed. Its cadence softens, and its meaning shifts with the light.

What once appeared luminous can, from another vantage point, reveal a different truth. What seemed certain softens at the edges. And sometimes, what first feels like an ending is simply the moment the horizon asks us to see it anew.

Perhaps that is the quiet gift of perspective: not that we become untouched by what we have lived through, but that we learn to look with unhurried clarity.

We begin to notice the difference between what merely glitters and what truly warms.

And when something genuine finds its way to us, we recognize its warmth without needing it to shout.

This bar was born in that space between the two.

Its lower half is deep mineral black, grounding the landscape like earth after nightfall. Above it, marigold, persimmon, and copper sweep across the sky in layers of fire and honey—the colors carrying the fierce, rhythmic elegance of Flamenco: heat and shadow, restraint and abandon, captured in the very breath of the pour. At the center, a golden sun rests two-thirds revealed behind the jagged ridge, held mid-motion between darkness and light.

Look once, and you may see sunset—the last amber light resting on the stone as the day gracefully yields to the dark.

Look again, and it becomes sunrise—the first warmth breaking from that same stillness, carrying the quiet promise of unwritten hours.

Neither view is wrong.

The mountain has not changed.

Only the eyes beholding it have.

That is the quiet power of Both Sides, Now. Its beauty is not in choosing a single side of the horizon, but in understanding that both belong to the same sky. There can be endings and beginnings held in the same frame, tenderness after uncertainty, and a profound freedom where we once saw only boundary.

The sun does not rush to prove that dawn will arrive. It simply follows its ancient arc—slipping beyond the ridge, and faithfully returning.

The mountain remains.

The light remains.

And so do we.

I think of that balance every time I make this bar.

Creating this landscape asked for the same patience embodied in its story. No motors. No blades. The botanicals were folded slowly by hand, guided by rhythm rather than force, allowing the natural temper of the oils to shape the composition.

There is no added water in this bar.

Instead, I slow-simmered a dense, ivory milk from grains of rice chosen and given to me with such thoughtful care, marrying it with golden camellia and velvety apricot kernel oils.

The rice carries its own quiet devotion here—a gift of intention, distilled through patience and warmth into something purely restorative.

When water finally meets the cured bar, it awakens a remarkably fine, cushioning lather. Weightless, creamy, and lingering, it feels less like cleansing and more like a tender, wordless touch across the skin.

A quiet conversation between hand and body.

Between the grace that was given and the quiet joy of receiving it.

Perhaps that is what it means to have seen both sides.

We do not have to forget the night to honor the dawn.

We simply learn to see with whole eyes.

And sometimes, the most precious light is not the one that promises the world, but the one that makes it effortless to stand in our own strength and find the way forward.

The sun is already on its way back.

coconut-free

Both Sides, Now - Camellia Apricot Rice Milk Body Bar

$35.00

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