Today is a beautiful day in San Antonio: big white clouds, clear blue skies, and cool morning temperatures. I'm fast approaching my favorite time of year here in Alamo country. It reminds me of home (in the Mid-West) when you didn't want to quit wearing your shorts so you'd throw a sweatshirt on to keep you comfortable. And as it gets closer to November, there's mornings when you're pretty sure it's going to rain by the smell in the air, but the smell is the smell of snow if I lived further north.
I have two favorite outdoor smells, and for me they are universal: the one I mentioned above and this one - the smell at the very tail end of a summer day, the mixture of hot, dry, dust and grass.
These two smells take me back to places I've been: Upstate New York in the Adirondacks in the middle of winter, Yosemite in the summer, Southern Michigan, Alaska in the fall, the Grand Canyon, Wyoming, Montana, Peru, Panama, I need only close my eyes and back there I am.
I love days like today where all I want to do is bust outta these work clothes, throw on a pair of shorts and a sweatshirt and frolic like a kid again.
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5 comments:
Since I've moved to Nevada, my favorite outdoor smell is sagebrush, especially after rain. The first year we were here, I made little sagebrush sachets to send to friends and family back East, just to give them some idea of what the smell's like. But that's nothing like actually being here!
Susan, what a wonderful idea. I'll need to remember that so when the Bluebonnets bloom next Spring I could send some to my family and friends "up North".
That moist soil in the air smell before rain is my favorite smell too. The other one is a sweet floral fragrance. I can't describe it any other way. The easiest remembered of the times I have smelled it was in my grandmother's yard where there was one of those mountain laurel bushes with sweet smelling purple flowers surrounded by tons of honey bees. The other time I used to smell it was going home from college down Hwy 83 past the citrus orchards when they were in bloom. The fragrance of the flowers would flow across the road in through my car window and tell me, "You are going home." At times like those the whole world smelled lovely.
Peace
lee - aren't those moments precious - it's almost like stepping outside of time for me, and then coming back fuller.
Absolutely! Nothing else could give me quite that sense of warm fuzzy. When that happens I not only feel as if all is right with the world but it lasts the better part of the day. (g)
Peace!
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