Olfactory Tour

Anyone spending any time near me lately knows full well that my van air conditioner is broken and how much I hate to drive in the heat and oh, the whining. But leaving early before the day heats up and returning late is one solution. And windows down do allow more senses to be alive to the route. The odors all certainly were there this morning, though due to the daylight I must have been focused on the visual inputs of the stunning Wisconsin scenery. But this evening, in the moonlight, there was the swampy mustiness of the valley where the stream overflowed its banks onto the floodplain last weekend, the sharp green freshness of hay mown just today, the organic smell of the dairy farm, the

musky odor of a skunk that I lately find myself liking, the sweet greasiness of meat cooking at the small town's tavern, another mowing of hay but older and richer, an odd floral fragrance of another small town that must be some chemical byproduct of industry, the sandy smell of the big river, wood smoke from the state park campground, and at last, the sweet fresh wet of the clear flowing creek that flows under the last stretch of road to home.