Writing Challenge: Your Top 5 Favorite Smells

“Smells ring bells.”

Olfactory memory, our ability to remember and correctly recognize certain smells, is a survival skill. As babies, the ability to recognize our mother’s scent contributes to maternal-infant bonding. And in older adults, anosmia – an impaired or completely missing sense of smell – can put seniors at risk for such things as kitchen fires and food poisoning. This is a especially a problem for those who are affected by stroke, dementia or other neurological conditions.

While a keen sense of smell can improve our chances of survival, smell is also closely aligned to emotion. Research has shown that, more than any other sense, our sense of smell is able to trigger memories and strong emotions. This is why just a whiff of the right perfume can transport us back to a decades old romance. Or the smell of chlorine in a swimming pool can bring us back to those lazy summer days of childhood. The memory can be so strong that we actually feel the water dripping from our hair and the sun beating down on our skin – even though it might be a brisk spring evening, or the coldest of winter days.

A number of behavioral studies have demonstrated that smells trigger more vivid emotional memories and are better at inducing that feeling of “being brought back in time” than images.

~ Jordan Gaines Lewis, Psychology Today

Your Top 5 Preferred Smells

This writing challenge asks you to list five of the smells you like best, and to tell us why you cherish them. I hope you’ll join in the challenge and share with the rest of us! You can find more information on the 5 Favorite Smells writing challenge in the “About LiteracyBase” area of the forum.

Read on to learn about my top 5 scents, below!

1) Coffee

Have you ever smelled roasting coffee beans? This glorious perfume goes beyond a pot of coffee brewing in your kitchen, or even the smell of espresso and commercially brewed coffee that you get when you walk into an ordinary coffee shop – although those are pleasing aromas too!

I’m talking about walking into a cafe that roasts their own beans. That rich, caramel bouquet greets you at the door, drawing you to the counter to choose your brew and begin a complete sensory trip. The light glints off the brass and copper implements, and a whole symphony of sounds combine with the perfumed air: tinkling of spoons tapping against cups and saucers, a distant clatter of plates, and the hum of conversation all around.

When I visit a coffee shop like this, it’s like time simply stops while I’m inside. The hustle and bustle may continue outside the doors, but for me just smelling those roasting coffee beans is enough to stop the clock. If you’ve never had this experience and you like coffee, do go find a good coffee house! You’ll be glad you did!

2) New-Mown Hay

There is a sweet, almost vanilla scent to some grasses and hay. You can also pick it up in plants like woodruff For me, it’s the smell of late summer and of fall. It’s a smell that reminds me of long walks in woods, and of sweetgrass burning at a Pow Wow. It reminds me of hayrides in the chill winter air, and of sugaring off parties where the partially processed maple syrup is poured onto the snow to make a taffy called, la tire.

3) Deli Meats in the Smoker

When we moved to the Kootenays we were fortunate to find a local deli shop that smokes their own cold cuts. The gentleman who owns the shop is a European-trained butcher and sausage maker, and his meats are some of the best I’ve ever tasted. I love to go into the shop when he’s smoking the meat. The aroma of smoke and spices wafts out into the store from the back room, and fills the entire space. I have to be honest, the delicious scent of the smoker at work is even better than the flavour of the finished meats!

4) Smoke from a Wood Fire

We haven’t been camping in years, and it’s been even longer since we’ve had a fireplace. But the scent of burning wood is a smell I still treasure. E have a neighbour who burns some kind of sweet-smelling wood in his fireplace. I think it might be apple or cherry wood, as both these trees are grown in orchards around our valley.

I love to go walking on a cold, crisp winter’s night and breathe in the scent of wood smoke as I watch the wispy plumes curling up, out of the chimney on a house tucked back just a ways from the road. There’s a certain magic about the frigid air on my face, the twinkling of the streetlights on the snow, and that perfumed smoke hanging in ribbons over the houses I pass along my way.

5) Earth Thawing in Springtime

The damp earth coming back to life in spring has a special smell, all its own. It’s not the same as the smell of the earth kissed by summer’s sun. It’s not the same as the smells of the plant matter breaking down in the fall. It’s the smell of new beginnings and promise. It’s the smell of dreams and the flowers that are getting ready to spring back to life. It’s black and green, and lush. You can’t help but smile as you walk on the spongy, wet grass. Anything is possible…

This is an expanded and revised version of a piece I originally published on Bubblews in October 2014

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