The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Rocky Mountain High was born in 2014 from a specific Colorado moment: the decision to legalize cannabis in the state. Dawn Spencer Hurwitz responded the way she knows best, not with a political statement, but with a botanical sketch. This fragrance opened the Cannabis Culture Collection, which the house connects to the Jazz Age and the plant's enduring presence in creative counterculture. Hurwitz built it from materials that already carried the scent of altitude. Pine needles, galbanum, and clary sage form the opening. Beneath them, cannabis absolute and hemp weave through frankincense and chrysanthemum. The base anchors the whole composition in balsam fir, oakmoss, Texas cedar, and fossilized amber.
What's unusual here isn't the cannabis, it's the company it keeps. Hurwitz pairs hemp and marijuana absolute with arborvitae, juniper, and a genuine skunk accord, refusing to soften the plant's feral character. The inclusion of blackcurrant bud, with its distinctive green musk edge, and galbanum pushes the opening further into the wild. Pine needle absolute in both top and heart notes creates continuity, like a steady atmospheric pressure that doesn't let up.
The evolution
The opening belongs to the air. Pine needles and galbanum arrive sharp, almost mentholated, with basil and clary sage giving it an herbal sting. Blackcurrant bud adds a green musk underneath. It smells like breaking a fir branch with your hands, sap releasing into cold morning air. Then the structure shifts. The cannabis note surfaces alongside frankincense and chrysanthemum absolute, and the green sharpens into something resinous and slightly sweet. Hemp adds a dry, hay-like warmth. Juniper and arborvitae keep it outdoors, bracing and coniferous. This is the phase that lingers closest to the skin, the middle of the wear where the composition settles into its true character. The drydown is where Hurwitz earns the name. The skunk accord emerges, not aggressively, but undeniably, the way cannabis actually smells in the wild rather than sanitized for polite company.
Cultural impact
Rocky Mountain High arrived in 2014 at a specific cultural intersection: Colorado's cannabis legalization and Hurwitz's own deep engagement with botanical perfumery. She built the composition around cannabis's feral, skunky reality, alongside pine, fir, and frankincense that ground the fragrance in unmistakable forest territory. Within the Cannabis Culture Collection, this is the first fragrance, the one that opened the series and established what the house was willing to do with the material. The cultural significance lies in the treatment.
