Friday, October 3, 2014
Which smell lets you know that it is autumn?

I truly believe that being outside in the autumn is the best.  We are rather outdoorsy people anyway, so we tend to take hikes exploring through the wilderness as often as we can.  We have a healthy dose of “free spirit-itis” in our blood, and the idea of being stuck indoors all day is a little unnerving.  There are quite a few lakes and reservoirs around our house that we visit weekly, and they have been part of our routine for years.  I enjoy getting out of the house for some fresh air, especially somewhere where the kids can run around and explore freely, and the kids love the freedom of exploring.  I love watching them climb hills, find sticks, find bugs and hop across the rocks on the shore.  This is where we are in our element, more than anywhere else.

The smells of autumn are distinctly of dry leaves that haven’t yet begun to decay but have spent months baking through the late summer.  The smells of the moss and algae that have dried onto rocks.  The dry, baked smells are the smells of autumn to me…

But the smell that lets me know it is autumn is when I am walking around my neighborhood and I smell smoke from fireplaces.  It means people are starting to stay indoors with their windows closed, rather than keeping their doors and windows open to try to get a breeze through the house to cool it off in the summer.  When there is smoke in the air, it tells me that people have made the change from flip flops to sweaters.  Families are beginning to keep their kids inside at 7:30pm because it is too dark, and they are entertaining their children with the mesmerizing flames in the fireplace.

The fireplace is the hearth of the home.  It calms tired minds at the end of the day, quietly crackling and dancing in the safety of its bricked home, warming our fingers and bringing us closer at night.