Existential Aromatherapy
Scents of Time and Place
Before I begin, I should note that a lot has been going on in the world in the last few weeks. I suspect that many of my Substack subscribers have found me by way of my comments on other Stacks and forums with more of a sociopolitical focus, and perhaps will be disappointed by the lack of any such commentary here. I will continue to occasionally post reflections on current events on my blog, but The Dendroica Project will remain true to its original mission of cultivating an ecological spirituality, an experience of belonging, participation, and co-creation with the living planet we inhabit.
I have read a fair bit of what might be called “nature writing”, and I have aspired to write of my own experiences of perceiving and participating in the natural world. One thing that I have noticed is that most nature writing focuses heavily on sight and sound, with the occasional mention of the tactile - the feeling of warm sun on an upturned face, perhaps - and an even rarer mention of the olfactory or the gustatory.
For me, the experience of being present in nature involves all five senses. I often will pluck a juniper sprig or a yarrow leaf to taste, as I listen to the calls of crickets, Varied Thrushes, or Pacific Tree Frogs and watch the sun dip below the mountain horizon while feeling the soft touch of the evening sea breeze. But it is the scents that are most powerful, that more than anything else provide me with a feeling of contentment, of belonging, of being rooted in place and time.
The English language provides an unfortunately slim vocabulary of olfactory adjectives suitable for the natural world. An aroma might be rich, or earthy, or heady. We can make reference to familiar scents, but the vast majority of these are of human origin: oiled leather, kerosene, baking bread, coffee, cigarette smoke. Outside of our created environments, there is little beyond new-mown grass and the particular scent of rain on dry earth that can provide a universal reference. Lacking better language, we are forced to be vague: “spring was in the air” or “the morning smelled like autumn.”
Furthermore, olfaction gets a bad rap. The unmodified intransitive form of the verb to smell is - uniquely among sense-language - assumed to be negative. Consider the difference in meaning conveyed by “I see!”, “Did you hear?”, “That smells!”, and “Do I smell?”. Of the small collection of available olfactory adjectives, many carry connotations of unpleasantness: acrid, pungent, cloying, putrid.
Then there is the issue that scents are nearly impossible to capture and share. We can take pictures and videos to share what we see. We can record sounds. We can even write recipes to replicate tastes. But we can do no such thing with scents. Or perhaps we could, but lacking sufficient interest we have gotten no farther than rudimentary scratch-and-sniff. As it is, if I describe the particular joy I feel when I walk past a blooming Daphne bush, or first catch the scent of swelling poplar buds, or bury my nose in a curtain of dripping moss, readers can perhaps vicariously experience the emotion but the scent itself is without meaning unless they too have been in its presence. Scents in nature are therefore of place. They are bioregional. In language, scents conjure memory and provide shared meaning for those who know them but provide no reference whatsoever to those beyond the range of whatever natural phenomena create them.
Perhaps I am unusual in the way that scents most directly trigger my emotions and memories. Perhaps for others it is the sight of the first daffodil or the song of the first Mourning Dove that brings a feeling of springtime and quickening. I certainly value and appreciate sights and sounds, but for me it is the aromas that send the strongest signal and reach through to the core of my being even if I am feeling distracted or preoccupied.
February still feels like winter; as I write this we are heading into our coldest weather in several years. There are changes afoot, though. Chickadees and Red-winged Blackbirds are singing their spring songs. The sun sets later and shines brighter, warming the skin even on blustery days. And then there are the scents. Daphne is one of the first plants to bloom here, with small and unremarkable flowers that can perfume an entire neighborhood. To step into a cloud of daphne scent is - for me - to feel in my whole body the coming of springtime. It is also a reminder of the first time I dicovered them tucked between university buildings, on Valentine’s Day, and plucked blossoms for a dear friend. It is a reminder of the little daphne plant I lovingly set in the soil while grieving the end of a relationship. It is a reminder of the daphne blossoms that my wife and I have exchanged for years, leaving them as little surprises on desks and countertops. I look forward to the blooming of daphne each year, an inerring signal that winter is almost over.
Compared to colder-weather climates, early spring is perhaps less of an olfactory phenomenon here in Oregon, where the winter storm winds and clear inversion currents carry scents of earth, marsh, and fir forest throughout December and January. In my native Minnesota, scents would largely disappear for a these months - the air too cold to volatilize the myriad organic compounds that our noses can detect. Instead of daphne, there on thawing days I would revel in the return of scents to the air. The scent of earth, dry grass, and leaves warming in the sun, released from under snow. The scent of warm lichen on granite. The scent of awakening moss on trees and cliffs, in which I would bury my young nose and inhale the revitalization of warmer days ahead.
Daphne is only the first of many seasonal scents of time and place; in a few weeks the air here will begin to smell of beehives. I realize this reference is without meaning to those who do not keep bees, so I must resort to limited language again. Think of honey, plus resinous pine, but yet unlike either and with more subtleties than can be described. If you live in the western US, simply find the nearest cottonwood and smell the swelling buds. Sometimes called “balm of Gilead”, this resin is medicinal and is collected by herbalists. It is also collected by bees to make the propolis that they use to seal out rain and drafts; the similarity to the scent of hives is not accidental. The scent permeates the air in wetlands and along rivers, wafting into uplands on shifting winds. It creates, for me, a sensation of pure joy, of richness, of enveloping sweetness, of life springing forth into new creation.
Daphne and poplar bud aromas have clear sources, but much of our “existential aromatherapy” does not. By April and May, the air will be filled with a menagerie of blended scents. The phytochemicals released by young leaves springing from buds, young grasses springing from the Earth. The aroma of grape blossoms, apple blossoms, and a hundred other flower scents subtle and bold. The scent of the soil itself, turned in preparation for planting. I have wonderful childhood memories of drifting off to sleep with a warm east wind wafting these scents through my bedroom window. The scent of springtime is unique in each region, with different blossoms and plants, and yet there is much in common across the globe - variations on the same theme of reawakening photosynthesis and a riot of green.
There comes a time, on a cool morning usually in late July or early August, when the air first “smells like fall.” This reflects a tipping point, when the volatile chemicals released by drying and decomposing plant matter begin to overpower the volatile chemicals released by expanding buds and dividing cells. So just as the first hints of springtime reach our noses in the middle of winter, so too do the first hints of autumn reach our noses in the peak of summer, when the days are still blazing hot and the chorus of birdsong is transitioning to a chorus of crickets and cicadas.
Like the characteristic and complex scent of springtime, the olfactory signature of autumn is both similar and unique across regions and nations. Falling leaves are perhaps the primary driver, their lighter biomolecules released into the air as their cell walls break down and fungi and worms begin to return them to the soil. Each year these scents bring back a whole cascade of memories. Walks near my childhood home in the season of the last asters, the bottle gentian, the thousands of spiderwebs crossing the trails. Packing oak leaves into barrels at a dear friend’s house, to mulch our garden in winter, and rolling down small hills in the barrels while the adults worked. Looking out across the Minnesota River Valley in hues of red and gold.
I have a love affair with far more seasonal scents than I could mention in one short essay. Lilac blossoms in early May. Basswood blossoms in Minnesota in the first week of July (not too different from the late-June lindens in Oregon). Garden lilies in midsummer, and jasmine vines in gardens around the neighborhood. The scent of haying season in Oregon, or of the corn harvest in Minnesota. The particular mycelial musk that permeates October forests at the start of the rainy season, when chanterelles and all manner of mushrooms are in abundance. The peculiar “fresh air” scent that rides the clear warm winds above wintertime inversions.
Then there are the aromas of particular microclimates or activities. The tang of juniper in summer heat. The welcoming smoke of a summer campfire. The scent of fresh-tilled soil close at hand when sowing seeds or pulling weeds. The unique essence of freshly-split oak, ash, fir, or pine stacked to dry. The freshness of line-dried bedsheets. Wafting vanilla from the sun-baked bark of ponderosa pine.
Am I unique in my olfactory experience of nature, in the way that smells - more than any other sensory input - give me a sense of place, a connection to memory, a feeling of being present and belonging? Or is it perhaps that most of us have these experiences but we lack the language to share it? We may lack the olfactory acuity of our canine friends, but our sniffers are sensitive enough to pick up something at most times when we are out of doors.
Wherever you are in the month ahead, whatever craziness is going on around you, I encourage you to be aware of the ever-present and ever-changing scents of the natural world. To take a moment to focus on them and notice what you feel, what you remember. To relax into being, as ever-renewing life begins to awaken from winter into another cycle of creative abundance.
I think that odour short-circuits our brain's filters and is vital to cementing memories. You are not alone in having a scent bring back a particular moment from your past, creating a feeling in your body or even planting anxiety where you might have been calm.
My particular favourites are the smell of rain on dry soil (it has a name - petrichor), the smell/feel of chill eucalypt air as you pass under a tree early on a frosty morning, the big smell and tang of bushfire smoke. The latter puts me on edge, unsurprisingly because my childhood was lived under the shadow of big billowing bushfire smoke clouds every few Summers, watching the wind and wondering if we have to evacuate.
Odour is very primal. Thank you for this reminder, and for the list of scents that I have known but not recently thought about.
I have an acute sense of smell, e.g.- I can detect mold on bread three days before it actually appears simply by sniffing it. I, too, lead with my nose when out and about and enjoy the adventure. Floral scents are a favorite . . . and pine forests . . . and campfires . . . and Spring mud takes me right back to my childhood breaking thin ice over little potholes revealing the unique scent of muddy dirt underneath. You're accurate, we need more languaging. Thanks!