I love seasons, and I love having all four of them. I don't really have a favorite season, but since it's fall right now, let's say fall is my favorite. It's easy to get nostalgic or vaguely philosophical over the seasons changing, and I could come up with plenty of analogies about the coloring, crisping leaves being a picture of shedding a little more of my youth. While there's a place for those analogies and nostalgia, plenty of people have talked about them, and they have probably said it all better than I could. I'm not feeling especially contemplative today anyway, but I do often enough that I'm sure I'll write down a vague philosophical thought or two before fall is over.Today, though, I've just been enjoying the way fall smells. One of the things I appreciate about seasons is their different scents, and in this area, I do think that autumn wins. Winter has the chilly, clean scents of fresh snow and pine trees, spring tends to smell like mud, but it also has hints of baby flowers and rain thrown in there. Summer is a whole array of smells--freshly cut grass, bright flowers of every description, and the sweet nighttime perfumes that I love, from mysterious blossoms I can somehow never find or identify.
But the smells of autumn are different. They're strong, intense, and specific. Smell is supposed to be the most evocative and memory-tied sense, and maybe that's part of why fall makes us nostalgic. Scents stir up memories, so we can't help but think about the past in fall. When I lived in Austria, I remember walking down the street one evening shortly after I'd moved there; the smell of autumn campfire smoke drifted past, and suddenly I felt at home in this new place. I scribbled down a sentence--"tonight I was walking and smelled a backyard campfire, the most familiar thing yet."
Even though I miss the country smells of being at home, fall has still followed me down here to DC. My walk home from the metro station in particular is an olfactory delight, even though it's just a few short blocks of houses. It doesn't really feel like fall to me until I have smelled campfire smoke, leaf piles, apple cider, and cinnamon, and I've enjoyed all of these scents on my walk home. A chill in the air, a bright blue sky, any combination of these smells, and a perfect autumn day is complete. Noses are sadly underrated. We worry about them being too big and obnoxious, mostly, or just being slightly odd. Even the word "nose" is a little odd, and people don't generally refer to the nose as their favorite feature. I'm sure some people do, but it always takes a backseat to eyes and lips when we're talking about facial features. Food and wine connoisseurs appreciate their noses, I'm sure, so this is some redemption.
I sometimes wonder what it must be like to be a dog, to learn about everything through smell. Or looking back at history, I wonder what famous places would smell like. Did the Colosseum sicken Roman noses at the end of the day, or was the splendor of castles and palaces a bit diminished in the summer by excessive BO? Were new scents part of the adventure to pioneers exploring the American west?
Noses add such an interesting perspective to our sensory picture of the world, and I love that God chose to give them to us. Fall wouldn't be the same without its scents, so shut your eyes and appreciate the next leafy, smoky, or apple-y smell your nose finds, and enjoy whatever memory it flings you into.
Here's to noses and the things they smell; cheers and sniffs.
