I have just returned from a two-week trip to Nevada and Montana. The first stop was the Jarbidge Wilderness and the town of Jarbidge, Nevada. Jarbidge proper is said to be the most remote town in the lower 48. I would say that it lived up to that claim.
Perhaps, what struck me most about this trip was how many of my childhood memories are linked to scents. The lilacs of Jarbidge brought me back to summers in Billings, Montana, and the warm earthy mix of rain on hot pavement layered with sweet purple lilacs.
Sitting along the river at our campsite it was the warm willows mixed with the fresh smell of mountain streams, tinged with a touch of trout on grass in a wicker fishing creel sending me back to my summers at our cabin outside Helena. The clean cold smell of snow, the spiced smell of sagebrush at sunset, the smell of fresh-cut hay.....All of these scents wrapped themselves around me, bringing me home.
I think it is the fact that there is no capture, no photograph, and no video able to approximate or replicate these scent experiences that make them all the more special. It is just that moment... The moment that you inhale and take time to smell the proverbial roses.