Where there’s smoke, there’s fall.
Fall.
Growing up in the Sunshine State, fall fell every September on the calendar – but not in our hearts.
Oh, there was some notion of the changing of seasons with 80 degree days, lower humidity and SEC football games.
While my sister and I were in grade school, my parents took us out of school for a week.
After loading up the station wagon, we headed northward on our annual pilgrimage to the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina.
We stayed in cabins, lodges and places where it made sense to have a fire burning in the fire place and hot chocolate with marshmallows melting in a warm cup.
And eventually we encountered, one of the most distinct memories of my life.
The smell of wood burning. Especially that of an outdoor burn.
I supposed people burned things in Central Florida but I have no memory of a smell.
The scent of Central Florida fall was a slightly sharper essence of muck and lake. Warm air — not hot, which was a whispering sigh of relief to summer’s glare.
That’s when fall arrived. Looking out the car window, onto gray skies and mountains of color with my nose full of the robust odor of charring wood. Breathing in deeply, filling my lungs with all that delicious carcinogenic air.
To a girl raised on beaches and smell of decaying minute sea creatures, it was heaven.
Or at least fall.
Linking up with Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop: 1.) Describe a smell that brings back memories.
What about you? What smell means summer has slipped into fall?
