The Smell of Fall

Today I walked around the golf course near my house. Living in San Diego there are some things that we don’t have here that I forget about. Some of them are unpleasant like what shivering to the bone feels like. Some of them are delightful like how it feels to go outside without a jacket for the first time in months or the crunch of day old snow when the temperature is hovering around zero and the humidity level is about 1.2%

On my walk today I realized that I had forgotten what fall smells like. I mean real fall, not just pumpkin pie and hot chocolate.

Last week we had a cold snap, and I am talking cold for San Diego, in the 30’s. For people like me who don’t have central heat in their house that is freaking cold! So all of the trees dropped their leaves, usually this is gradual with different trees doing this throughout the fall to the spring so there is always a few trees bare but they usually bud right away without much dead branch time. Anyway, all of the trees dropped their leaves so there are PILES of leaves! I haven’t seen a pile of leaves since I moved here over 8 years ago!

As I was on my walk I passed a grove of bare trees and it was then that a smell that I haven’t smelled in nearly forever hit me and it all came back. It was the smell of slightly damp decaying leaves. It rained a little this morning so there was the earthy smell of the somewhat dried mud on the path and then the wet leaf smell. The smell that makes me know there are little worms eating up all of that delicious plant matter. The smell that makes me think of the last few days before the first snow when squirrels are frantically scampering with no discernable purpose. The smell that reminded me of waking up and seeing shockingly blue skies backing the reds, yellows, and browns.

The smell was so sweet and so rich that it felt like it was wreathing my head in memories and connecting my soul back to the ground. By breathing in deep to the bottom of my lungs I was filling myself up with the way things should be. I was almost euphoric as I breathed in the sweet leaves, the damp soil, the menthol of the eucalyptus, and the comforting pines. Every breath that I took felt like I was filling up on the good things in life, the things that are pure in the most basic of ways.

Somehow those olfactory sensations had reconnected my inner self with the bigger picture. I get so wrapped up in things that are silly and passing that I forget to enjoy the everyday, the pedestrian, the common. I think at the end of my life I will have wished I had enjoyed the everyday things….well…not to sound cliché but….everyday!  How petty some of the things I get worked up about are! But oh, how joyful to be outdoors and one with this dynamic place that is cycling around us, and with us, and in us.