Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Summer

Lightning bugs have begun to appear here this week.  Their arrival is one of the two things I tolerate Summer  for.  The smell of newly-cut grass is the other.  Oh, and I like the smell of rain on really hot pavement.


I realized some time ago that my most vivid memories are triggered by smell.  A familiar aroma willl put me right back into a place, or at a time, where I then begin to recall what I saw and what I heard.  If a memory does spring out of vision or hearing, hard on its heels are what things smelled like and what physical sensations I was having.  Lightning bugs, for example, cause me to smell that cut grass, and maybe some grilling burgers, while feeling my feet on the ground and tree roots and sharp sticky weeds we had to steer clear of when trying to catch them.  We also had to be careful running across driveways, because, back then, they were all
gravel.




1 comment:

kmkat said...

Sense of smell is, I think I remember reading, one of our most primitive senses. Makes sense, given that most animals operate on scents. I think smells go directly to our emotions, bypassing all the higher brain functions.

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