When Joshua Peine left Hollywood for New Mexico more than 30 years ago, a Hopi medicine man told him that cedar talks.
    That's something Peine (pronounced Pine) has never forgotten because the cedar hasn't stopped talking to him.
    "I didn't know what it meant then, and I still don't know what it means now, but I can say this, it hasn't stopped talking," he says.
    Peine is referring to a simple cedar sachet he created more than 30 years ago, which, in turn, helped him establish his distinctive, cedar-scented, mountainside business on the outskirts of the village of Placitas.
    Peine. the president and owner of Clear Light The Cedar Company, says the business has evolved from cedar sachets to body-care products purchased by the royal Egyptian family. That came after making some strategic alliances with businesses like the Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort & Spa.
    In the last 10 years, Peine has inked deals to place his now famous green cedar needle sachets, as well as some of his other products that include lotion, skin silk. shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, candles, soaps, fragrances and incense, in some of New Mexico's most lucrative and authentic tourist settings.
    Peine has carefully carved out his own niche by strategically placing his cedar products in places that include Santa Fe's Inn of the Anasazi, the Albuquerque International Sunport, Denver International Airport, and the Palace of the Governors. However, Peine says one his most important placements was at the Tamaya Resort & Spa.
    In 2000, before the Hyatt Tamaya opened, Peine says he was approached by the resort's spa director to not only have some of his products displayed in the hotel's executive rooms and gift shop, but to showcase one of his cedar-scented inventions to Hyatt Tamaya customers as they walked through the resort's doors.
    Peine worked with Hyatt Tamaya officials on the idea, and he now burns his cedar-scented incense sticks throughout much of the Tamaya. As a result, he's amassed somewhat of a cult business following.
    Peine says the results of this marketing tactic are clearly evident through his online sales, which now account for about 90 percent of his business traffic. Of the more than 30 orders Peine received on Dec. 8, for example, 27 were placed online and a majority of them were from out-of-state customers.
    Peine says the business's name came from his love of New Mexico's clear skies.
    During the 1970s and most of the 1980s, Peine wandered aimlessly around many of the American Southwest's and western Canada's loneliest highways on a 1970 Harley motorcycle. Peine says his journeys even brought him as far as the highway would go in Saskatchewan, where he traded with the province's Cree nation.
    Peine says he spent most of those years trading and selling before finally stumbling upon an important business partner.
    According to Peine, both the Hyatt Tamaya and the Inn of the Anasazi are his two main sources of new business. He also takes pride in the fact that both hotels have been featured and have won prestigious Conde Nast magazine awards.
    "It took 29 years to have the proper stage," the former actor says. "It's like an actor who gets the right part or is discovered after 30 years of work," Peine says.
    Peine, who left the Hollywood scene in 1970, where he was a Warner Bros. contract player and appeared in shows like "Highway Patrol," "My Three Sons" and "Father Knows Best, " came to New Mexico on his motorcycle and began trading with the Hopi and Navajo nations. He also started learning about the therapeutic power of cedar.
    "[Only] a small percentage of the American world is involved with scents or knows anything about them and that's kind of sad because it's the master sense which unlocks all of the other senses. Society eventually desensitizes you." Peine notes.
    Hollywood hasn't left his life either, as some of his customers still ply their trade on Broadway and remain in the Hollywood hills.
    Some of those famous customers include Isabella Rossellini, William H. Macy, Blythe Danner (Gwyneth Palthrow's mother), Bernadette Peters, Robert Mirabel, and Pippa Scott.
    Beyond New Mexico, Peine says his products are in places like the Savage River Lodge in Maryland and Jenny Lake Lodge in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
    Peine says he has stayed clear of trying to market his products in big department stores because he says it takes a lot of energy and a different business attitude to accomplish that.
    "I had a meeting with myself one year and I decided that I couldn't do a little of this and a little of that. I could sell to Dilliard's, but I'm not ready or committed to that. It takes a different person or attitude to do that, so by keeping things simple and basic, that works better for me," Peine says.
    Peine says he spends nothing on advertising and employs 12 people.
    He also keeps a number of his products in the Hyatt Tamaya gift shop, and like at the Inn of the Anasazi, he strategically places products in a basket in the Tamaya's executive rooms. He says a large number of guests who visit the resort for conferences end up contacting him after returning home.
    "I joyously watched the hotel come together." Peine says. "I've been here for 33 years when nothing was here and to suddenly have a world class hotel and golf course built in my backyard and interested in my products, to me it's something to be happy about."
    In 1988, Peine says he invested about $500,000 in Laughing Bear Ranch. The ranch property houses three offices, a showroom combined with a warehouse with packaging, ordering and manufacturing space all wrapped up together. Also located on his Laughing Bear Ranch is the warehouse space where Peine control-dries his cedar through grain herbs, solar power and lighting techniques.
    Peine says he dried 40,000 pounds of cedar this year alone. His cedar products range in price from $6 to $50.
    Before moving to his Plactas ranch in 1988, Peine's total sales were about $250,000 in 1986. In the last several years, he says he's doubled his total sales to about $500.000.
    Both are a far stretch from his first 10 years in business, when his company was known as Clear Light Trading Company and on a good day, topped $50 in sales.
    Also located on his property is his modest house and several gardens where he harvests his special product ingredients, like lavender, rosemary, cedar, sage, and yucca.
    After developing his first product, cedar needle sachets, more than 30 years ago, Peine has gone on to develop more than 30 other products.
    He says he got the cedar sachet idea from some of the local pueblo Indians, who use dried cedar needles for healing purposes.
    In fact, posted on the walls around Peine's business are letters and emails from customers, some of whom claim his cedar products have had healing effects on them or loved ones ailing with health problems like asthma.
    The consistent theme he hears from his customers, especially those who have stayed at the Hyatt Tamaya, is that they want to bring his fragrances back to their homes in Rhode Island, New York, California, Japan, Italy or New Zealand, as a little taste of New Mexico.
    "My customers will buy my product in a place like Tamaya and about two years later, when they realize they are out, they freak,", Peine says.
    "And they freak because their connection with New Mexico is gone. So all of sudden, I get these big orders from customers in places like New Zealand."
    Peine also sells his cedar products to Wild Oats Markets in Albuquerque and Santa Fe and the Soap Opera For Gourmet Bathers in Santa Fe.
    Peine says the Santa Ana Pueblo elders, with whom he feels a strong connection, have been receptive to his business venture. He also says Hyatt officials have been experimenting with local and indigenous fragrances in their other hotels.