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!
I'm not entirely sure how I found your substack, unless I found it linked it one of your comments on the Ecosophia dreamwidth page. Either way this is refreshing and I'm all about appreciating seasonal scents instead of discussing current *human* affairs, so consider me all in on following you.
Anyway, my sense of smell has been blunted most of my life. I'm not entirely sure why, but I've just never really had a strong nose for aromas. My wife on the other hand, smells EVERYTHING. Good and bad. However, I'll share a list of scents that have wafted past my nose recently while enjoying my exurban still-mostly-forested Georgia town:
Azaleas, of unknown cultivar. For some reason whenever I walk past the azaleas in my front garden plot, I find myself looking around, because something about the smell of their flowers --and apparently their buds too, given the time of year -- smells just enough like cannabis to for me to look around and see if I can catch my neighbors in the act. Not in a 'narc' sort of way more of a 'lol, who is it?!'. But then I realize that my nose has deceived me yet again and it's those somewhat odd smelling azaleas. I haven't come across any other azaleas that remind me of that aroma. It's possible they aren't even azaleas, maybe some other thing related to rhododendrons.
Oak wood fire smoke. Our neighbors across the fence are very traditional country type people. Huge garden, cut their own firewood on their 50 acres, big mounted buck head right by the front door. Since it's winter, cold nights are almost always accompanied by that aroma coming out of their chimney. Sometimes it's interspersed with eastern red cedar, Juniperus virginiana. Now that's a smell I can appreciate. I love that smell. My wife doesn't though. Not because it smells bad, but because somehow she wound up with an allergy to Juniper species. Poor thing.
Those are probably the main two that have grabbed my attention lately. Morel season starts soon and I hope to be able to head out to my morel patch near "the ghost house" in the woods a couple miles from here. That early fungal smell is delightful, if only cause of its associated with the rich flavor and thrill of a successful foraging expedition.
I've never been able to detect a scent from azaleas - perhaps different folks are sensitive to different smells. Wood smoke has lots of good memories for me as well. I have heated with wood my entire life, and in frigid Minnesota it was one of the few aromas in the air on otherwise scent-free frigid days. This year we are mostly burning silver poplar which has a somewhat acrid smoke.
I need to find more morels this year. Out west the best spots are in forests that have recently burned - of which we have had no shortage in the past few years.
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!
You had me at "Of the small collection of available olfactory adjectives"
I'm not entirely sure how I found your substack, unless I found it linked it one of your comments on the Ecosophia dreamwidth page. Either way this is refreshing and I'm all about appreciating seasonal scents instead of discussing current *human* affairs, so consider me all in on following you.
Anyway, my sense of smell has been blunted most of my life. I'm not entirely sure why, but I've just never really had a strong nose for aromas. My wife on the other hand, smells EVERYTHING. Good and bad. However, I'll share a list of scents that have wafted past my nose recently while enjoying my exurban still-mostly-forested Georgia town:
Azaleas, of unknown cultivar. For some reason whenever I walk past the azaleas in my front garden plot, I find myself looking around, because something about the smell of their flowers --and apparently their buds too, given the time of year -- smells just enough like cannabis to for me to look around and see if I can catch my neighbors in the act. Not in a 'narc' sort of way more of a 'lol, who is it?!'. But then I realize that my nose has deceived me yet again and it's those somewhat odd smelling azaleas. I haven't come across any other azaleas that remind me of that aroma. It's possible they aren't even azaleas, maybe some other thing related to rhododendrons.
Oak wood fire smoke. Our neighbors across the fence are very traditional country type people. Huge garden, cut their own firewood on their 50 acres, big mounted buck head right by the front door. Since it's winter, cold nights are almost always accompanied by that aroma coming out of their chimney. Sometimes it's interspersed with eastern red cedar, Juniperus virginiana. Now that's a smell I can appreciate. I love that smell. My wife doesn't though. Not because it smells bad, but because somehow she wound up with an allergy to Juniper species. Poor thing.
Those are probably the main two that have grabbed my attention lately. Morel season starts soon and I hope to be able to head out to my morel patch near "the ghost house" in the woods a couple miles from here. That early fungal smell is delightful, if only cause of its associated with the rich flavor and thrill of a successful foraging expedition.
Now I'm gonna think harder about scents...
I've never been able to detect a scent from azaleas - perhaps different folks are sensitive to different smells. Wood smoke has lots of good memories for me as well. I have heated with wood my entire life, and in frigid Minnesota it was one of the few aromas in the air on otherwise scent-free frigid days. This year we are mostly burning silver poplar which has a somewhat acrid smoke.
I need to find more morels this year. Out west the best spots are in forests that have recently burned - of which we have had no shortage in the past few years.