Scents

Descriptive writing engages all the senses, immersing the reader in an imaginary world, helping them suspend their disbelief. Most authors do well at describing sights and sounds but too often overlook the remainder of our highly sensorial existence.

Of all our sensory systems, smell is the most strongly linked to memory. Scents have the power to carry us back to even our earliest experiences with vivid detail. The fragrance of the lip gloss worn by the first girl I kissed still propels me back to that nervous moment with all its associated sensations and feelings. Even the details of my surroundings, her street, her house, her room, flash across my mind whenever I catch a hint of that cloying and artificial adolescent scent. Remembering it makes me smile.

On a warm, spring day a few months ago, Karen and I explored Heritage Village, a park recreating life early in Pinellas County's history. It is composed of historic structures relocated from around the county, several houses, a barn, a garage and general store, a water tower, a train station and railroad passenger car, a carriage house, a bandstand. As an exercise, I tried to catalog some of the scents we encountered that day as we wandered.

First, we toured the houses, mostly multi-storied affairs from the turn of the last century. Each was a collection of small and simple rooms that reminded me of my grandparent's house on Ocean Street in Quincy. Some were built from light and rough-cut cypress, others from oak darkened and polished smooth by many hands. In every one, the scent of lumber had long been replaced by a musty odor I associate with a Weymouth basement, not unclean so much as slightly damp and under-used. The smell of dust stirred from where it had settled in the corners mixed with a hint of mold slowly spreading its tendrils into any unsealed crevice and a suggestion of compacted dirt somewhere beyond the light.

Another New England memory drifted up in one entry with the smell of dusty cloth rising from a well-worn rag rug whose once brightly colored braids had grayed and were in need of a serious beating. Upstairs, the bedroom was an overlay of a cedary top note from long stored linen recently aired as a toile spread was snapped across the bed to prepare the room for guests, and the tangy base note of lemon oil applied in rich, gleaming layers to the dark, walnut furniture like we smell when opening a drawer in Karen's grandmother's china cabinet, or folding down the writing surface of her great aunt's secretary. The parlor contained the musty-dusty scent of long undisturbed crushed velvet mingled with that of brittle paper captured in cracked cloth bindings. The dormant kitchen still held the clean scent of flour mingled with baking powder and darkly seasoned cast-iron cookery ready to be pressed back into service baking biscuits at any moment.

In a garden beyond the kitchen door, a chest-high rosemary bush's sage green leaf-like needles emitted a pungent cloud of essential oil that hung in the air whenever anyone brushed past, reminding me of the savory aromas of a Mediterranean kitchen. Down the path to the bandstand, a blanket pine needles baked in the bright sun, emitting a dry, slightly resinous odor I've long associated with August hikes and sunny afternoons at summer camp.

The rough and mismatched slats of a barn were still enough to trap the scent of old, mostly evaporated gasoline emanating from the rusty tractors stored within. The simple, open-air stalls lining the outside held the more familiar smell of trampled hay mixed with manure, long un-oiled leather and a hint of musk from horsehair hanging in the combs. In the nearby carriage house, the smell of hardwood charcoal bellowed to nearly smokeless orange embers almost overpowered the lighter scent of red-hot iron being pounded in horseshoes.

More modern, industrial scents clung to the other spaces we visited. The couplings of the railroad passenger car near the train station were heavy with the smell of thick, industrial grease, which gave way to hot, painted metal as we ascended the steps to look inside. The fainter smell of pitch-preserved railroad ties greeted us as we descended. The lighter scent of motor oil and other lubricants clung to the Model T parked inside the mechanic's garage. You could just detect the sweet and tangy hint of oranges near the packing crates in the general store.

In the field beneath the water tower, I could almost smell the thick gray, sharply sulfurous smoke of black powder from the muskets and the cannon clinging to the warm wool Civil War uniforms from recreation of a skirmish they hold there every year. As we headed home across the pine bridge, the dank, earthy smell of mud mixed with decomposing leaf litter by the stream bid us a pungent Florida farewell.

Cats live in a world where scents paint a picture as clear to them as the view outside your window. In order to understand and accept something new in their lives, they have to sniff it. Fragrances and aromas permeate every moment of our lives, but unlike cats we rarely take the time to notice. Even you don't live in such a rich and redolent environment, I hope something in the above descriptions stirred a pleasant memory within you.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III