The plans were complete. My bestie and I were off to South Dakota.
Off to the “Mount Rushmore” state, to see the eerie stillness of the eroding caverns of the Badlands, the untouched landscape of the Black Hills, and the grandiose mountain drives, where human engineers and mother nature made one-way passages so curvy you can see yourself coming and going.
Mount Rushmore staggers the mind. How could anyone be brave enough to chisel and carve four 60-foot-high faces into rocks 5,000 feet above ground?
We hiked among rushing rivers and streams, cupping the fresh water into our hands, and we drove the rolling prairie of Custer State Park where free-range bison graze.
Bison are mostly unthreatening, we learned, and decidedly nonplussed by cars of humans gathering to get a closer look at their majesty in natural habitat.
We had driven a long way hoping to spot them and were rewarded by the sight of over 30 gathered round a wallowing pit at the edge of a single lane road.
As charmed as we were by these nearly extinct animals grazing and communing in their natural habitat, the trip left us talking more about the smell and feel of the fresh air in the Black Hills.
We assigned it to the damp air drafting from exposed soil that lines the banks of the hills and streams. Though the sun was warming us, in the canyons our skin felt dewy as if we were in a steamy spa or a cave where the temperature is a consistent 52 degrees.
Absent of human-caused activity, being in the forest is a lesson in nature. Her own scents emerge from decaying trees, pines, conifers, and evergreens of every make and type, magnificent all, smelling sweet and sharp, and so refreshing.
Not native to the U.S. in ancient times, cedar tree spores were carried by wind from the Middle East to the state of Maine, across the top of the country to the Dakotas and further west into the lowlands and desert. Their barks are revered by indigenous peoples to make teas and tinctures that soothe and cure ailments of all kinds.
In the hills, if you know what your nose is searching for, you can catch the scents of pines and conifers emitting their natural chemical compound of terpenes. Terpenes are composed of carbon and hydrogen atoms. And they’re built from different numbers and kinds of molecules: pinene which, you might guess, has a pine smell, and limonene, which smells…well, citrusy, even though there are no lemons, oranges, or grapefruits growing anywhere nearby.
Here, one is reminded that nothing ever goes away, it just changes forms. The elements we find in nature can be isolated, diluted, compounded, and emerge on store shelves as good-smelling cleaning products, or wonderful perfumes, a gel that soothes a burn, or scents that make us feel good by just having them around.
Humans, like other mammals, have an inborn sense of the importance of scent to memory. No matter where, and how far we travel, it’s basic to our nature.
Former astronaut and International Space Station Commander Leroy Chiao was asked by a reporter what Earth smells like after being in space for 6 1/2 months.
“……when the rescue forces opened the spacecraft hatch, the smell of muddy grass flooded the cabin. That may not sound like a nice smell, but at the time, to me, it was the best smell ever. Almost instantly, it caused a flood of memories to come into my mind, about special moments I had experienced on this Earth. I knew I was home.”
Jean Greco for The Gift of Scent