An audio version of this essay is available on Substack here.
“Smells are the fallen angels of the senses.” Helen Keller
Then
US 50 runs the width of America, from Sacramento to Ocean City, Maryland. Every July my family would join this historic highway near Annapolis to make our summer sojourn to the sea. The towering Chesapeake Bay Bridge was a prominent midway point, and from there we’d pass south through Maryland’s Eastern Shore to Cambridge, and then due east. “One hour to Ocean City” my mom would say, and we’d all light up with the tingle of holiday anticipation.
What I remember most about these drives are the smells, in particular the briny aroma of the Atlantic Ocean that would tease us over those final 30 miles into OC. Our provenance was Central Pennsylvania farm country, with a July bouquet of shucked corn, cow manure, and farm machinery. I was a lucky child to have this upbringing, but eager to leave it behind for a week of waves and boardwalk adventure. On the long approach to OC we’d start passing a stream billboards advertising beachside hotels and restaurants (Philips Crab House: the Best Jimmies in OC!), the sky would assume a blue shimmering haze, and then the first waves of salty air would work through the vents of my dad’s 1960s blue Buick wagon. All thoughts of home, gone.
Now
My days in Provence are also marked by a broad palette of smells, particularly rich through the summer months. The August stalls at the daily markets are full of ripe local peaches, apricots, and plums. It was strawberries in June and mountains of cherries in July. The figs and Cavaillon cantaloupes are so full of sugar now their skins crack and honeybees hover. Bunches of bright green mint sit among the fresh coriander and parsley at every stall, and lavender, harvested last month, is arranged in bouquets wrapped in twine or offered in small cloth sacks perfect for winter closets or dresser drawers. It can be sensorially overpowering.
This rich symphony of perfumes will fade in the fall, yielding to the more subtle scents of Mediterranean herbs – thyme, rosemary, bay leaves – and gourds halved or quartered for your Sunday soup. But it will be a fade, not a fold. I swear the blind can navigate Provence, at least the markets, on scent alone year around.
If I leave Provence someday it’s the smells that will most linger in memory. I don’t take them for granted, but I also don’t grant them enough significance in my calculus of happiness and place. The sight of lavender fields in June; the sound of cigale hordes (cicadas) in the hot summer countryside; the tang of local olives and chilled rosé at apéro hour, and the laughter of friends sharing said apéro; these things are unique to Provence and core to its charm. But it's the fragrance of life here that I find most enchanting.
You
Are there scents that bring back your favorite memories? Are there smells uniquely symbolic to the region in which you live now? I ask you not to take these for granted. You may want to seek them out for a quick trip down memory lane. My dad (of the big blue Buick) lost his sense of smell around retirement age. He was not one to complain, but the enjoyment of my mom’s delicious casseroles was forever dimmed, as was his savoring of a ripe, juicy tomato picked from the family vine in July and sampled between the rows. Wow, that is a tomato! Now, go out and have a good sniff!
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