A Stark Image of Before and After
Years ago I wrote about scent-triggered memories.
“Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.“ - Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses.
I remember when I wrote about that way back when. We're about to get our first snow of the season. I used to go into the back and look at the wet snow covering each pine needle, look up into the trees and breathe in the scent that reminded me of Lac Paquin. I'd try to get a good picture looking up the huge trees and would inevitably get a face full of snow as a breeze would knock the snow off. Our country house had burned down when I was in my early 20s but the memories burned bright every winter as our pines in the back had brought this to mind as I'd sweep snow off the path in the morning. That smell of the evergreens and pines brought back every weekend, every winter holiday when we went up to the country. Now, there won't be that trigger.
It's so bright. I'm still not used to having to shade my eyes when I'm outside. I used to say that the trees would protect us from the worst of the weather. They were a protective cloak, so tall that you had to strain your neck to see to the tops and pretty much had to leave the house to see to the absolute tops of them. My mother used to worry about the trees saying they were a hazard, but if we didn't have them, the tornado would have taken our house out. Yes, they fell, but they protected our house as much as they could before they fell to the force of the wind.
And now that we're so exposed, we'll have to look at replanting, rebuilding our house and the surroundings. A new beginning, but trees will definitely be an important part of it all.
“Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.“ - Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses.
I remember when I wrote about that way back when. We're about to get our first snow of the season. I used to go into the back and look at the wet snow covering each pine needle, look up into the trees and breathe in the scent that reminded me of Lac Paquin. I'd try to get a good picture looking up the huge trees and would inevitably get a face full of snow as a breeze would knock the snow off. Our country house had burned down when I was in my early 20s but the memories burned bright every winter as our pines in the back had brought this to mind as I'd sweep snow off the path in the morning. That smell of the evergreens and pines brought back every weekend, every winter holiday when we went up to the country. Now, there won't be that trigger.
It's so bright. I'm still not used to having to shade my eyes when I'm outside. I used to say that the trees would protect us from the worst of the weather. They were a protective cloak, so tall that you had to strain your neck to see to the tops and pretty much had to leave the house to see to the absolute tops of them. My mother used to worry about the trees saying they were a hazard, but if we didn't have them, the tornado would have taken our house out. Yes, they fell, but they protected our house as much as they could before they fell to the force of the wind.
And now that we're so exposed, we'll have to look at replanting, rebuilding our house and the surroundings. A new beginning, but trees will definitely be an important part of it all.
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