Montauk smells open, salty, and sweet—wild beach roses, wild grasses and shrubs, pine trees, sand, big skies, and vast ocean—with hints of sunscreen.
The Berkshires smell clean and earthy—dark moist rocky dirt, thick woods, ferns, pine trees, wildflowers, gravel roads, blue lakes—luscious, so rich and deep and sweet I want to lap it up and bathe in it.
Ft. Collins, Colorado, smells fresh and clear—sandy desert plains, scattered shelters of grass and trees, rushing rivers and rippling lakes—spacious, with lots of room for the imagination.
The southern Rockies southwest of Denver smell like red dirt and Ponderosa pines—rich and heady and spiritual—almost like the piney woods of East Texas where my mother’s family comes from—but thinner and more dispersed with more room to breathe and to distinguish individual scents.
St. Louis, Missouri, smells like brown dirt, grass, trees, and flowers—the meeting of the mighty Missouri and Mississippi rivers, the Gateway to the West—earthy, watery, grassy, flood plains and high rocky bluffs—rich and full like southern and eastern smells, but more spacious like northern and western smells.
The Berkshires smell clean and earthy—dark moist rocky dirt, thick woods, ferns, pine trees, wildflowers, gravel roads, blue lakes—luscious, so rich and deep and sweet I want to lap it up and bathe in it.
Ft. Collins, Colorado, smells fresh and clear—sandy desert plains, scattered shelters of grass and trees, rushing rivers and rippling lakes—spacious, with lots of room for the imagination.
The southern Rockies southwest of Denver smell like red dirt and Ponderosa pines—rich and heady and spiritual—almost like the piney woods of East Texas where my mother’s family comes from—but thinner and more dispersed with more room to breathe and to distinguish individual scents.
St. Louis, Missouri, smells like brown dirt, grass, trees, and flowers—the meeting of the mighty Missouri and Mississippi rivers, the Gateway to the West—earthy, watery, grassy, flood plains and high rocky bluffs—rich and full like southern and eastern smells, but more spacious like northern and western smells.
On a hot, humid summer night, in the woods, in the dark, with no streetlights or flashlights, just moonlight, Innsbruck, Missouri, about an hour west of St. Louis, smells like cinnamon—like a rich, heady stew of sweet wet dirt and grass and trees and berries and flowers and honeysuckle and lake water and horses, spiked with cinnamon. Without the eye to distinguish the sights, the nose takes over as the organ of discrimination, taste, and joy.
