Spring Scents
In the book, 'Pleasurable Kingdom,' Jonathan Balcombe writes, 'They (animals) live - I suspect - mainly in the present. I wonder about this when animals can have such a powerful sense of smell, and when I know that a smell can drop me instantly into a specific past.The scent of lilac recreates our walk to primary school. Along one stretch the stone wall of a garden towered above us. Hanging over the wall was a lilac bush which in spring diffused a scent from heaven into the air around it. We could have walked along the path that adults chose, but we often preferred to climb over rocks at the base of the wall.Near the school was a canteen from whose tall chimney descended smells unlike those of home cooking. Recently I detected one of those smells when I passed the factory of a local butcher.The smell of a fox transports me to my grandmother's farm where we spent idyllic summer days in childhood. We were walking along a hedge that separated two fields when our cousin stopped. We noticed a strong distinctive smell and she told us a fox had passed that way.Some years ago we visited a folk park and walked around a variety of traditional cottages. From the garden of one a smell arose that was exactly like that in the garden behind my grandmother's farmhouse. It brought me to a sudden stop.The smells of primroses, bluebells, wild garlic, flowering currant, to name a few, connect me to the places where I saw them as a child.I contrast the memory I have of past weather. People say that this winter was the coldest for fifty years, but I have no memory of a harsh winter about fifty years ago.In the photograph Sherpa has found an interesting smell. I wonder if it awakened memories for her.
In the book, 'Pleasurable Kingdom,' Jonathan Balcombe writes, 'They (animals) live - I suspect - mainly in the present. I wonder about this when animals can have such a powerful sense of smell, and when I know that a smell can drop me instantly into a specific past.The scent of lilac recreates our walk to primary school. Along one stretch the stone wall of a garden towered above us. Hanging over the wall was a lilac bush which in spring diffused a scent from heaven into the air around it. We could have walked along the path that adults chose, but we often preferred to climb over rocks at the base of the wall.Near the school was a canteen from whose tall chimney descended smells unlike those of home cooking. Recently I detected one of those smells when I passed the factory of a local butcher.The smell of a fox transports me to my grandmother's farm where we spent idyllic summer days in childhood. We were walking along a hedge that separated two fields when our cousin stopped. We noticed a strong distinctive smell and she told us a fox had passed that way.Some years ago we visited a folk park and walked around a variety of traditional cottages. From the garden of one a smell arose that was exactly like that in the garden behind my grandmother's farmhouse. It brought me to a sudden stop.The smells of primroses, bluebells, wild garlic, flowering currant, to name a few, connect me to the places where I saw them as a child.I contrast the memory I have of past weather. People say that this winter was the coldest for fifty years, but I have no memory of a harsh winter about fifty years ago.In the photograph Sherpa has found an interesting smell. I wonder if it awakened memories for her.
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