Smell. It may well be the sense that evokes sense-memory most strongly for me. I instantly go places, see things, touch on spiritual echoes that smell stirs up.

A spring storm last night kept on into rain this morning. I opened my windows one by one when I woke, and was met each time with a dizzying fug of rain-soaked earth, greenness and water.

If I close my eyes I could be a thousand special, sacred places, in that scent…but I always go to the porch at Kilmarnock, standing by the curling vines on the iron posts and watching the rain come down like silver thread. When it would stop I would walk around the yard chasing after frogs. It’s a long memory, spread throughout my younger self: inhaling damp cedar and pine, the purple clematis climbing the wall, the dragonflies and hummingbirds and droning bees, the smell of the river, and watching crows and the clouds roll on.

I wish there was a way to capture that smell, or to go back to that place. But there isn’t. So I wait until it rains, and let that memory flood me, and hold onto it dearly.