the smell of spring, OH yeah!!

today, for the first time this year, i smelled spring. a certain Unmistakable smell that gets in the oregon air only in the springtime. must come from some prolific native foliage (i’ve never figured out just what), a thick sweet yellow smell.

most years i live in anticipation of it, sometimes for weeks before actually smelling it, but this year i hadn’t even thought of it yet. the air is still so cold from the long dreary winter, no leaves on the trees, and the daffodils have just begun declaring themselves (which usually happens in february). so when i caught a whiff of it in the air today while getting in my car, it was doubly sweet for taking me by complete surprise.

sometimes, a moment will instantly connect me up to other like moments, forming a chain of associations strung together by something other than linear time. this happened today when that first hint of “the smell” seeped into my lungs. images came flooding into my mind, memories of many other years of “first time i smelled spring” moments. once in the parking lot of the incredible universe store, once in front of the apartments glen and i lived in when sherrie was a little girl, once when hiking along eagle creek in the mud, once when walking to the store.

smelling “the smell” has been of big psychological import to my warmth-starved transplanted-alabamian psyche for all the years i’ve lived in oregon. in my birthplace, winter just flows into spring effortlessly. well, punctuated by a few electrical storms and blown transformers, but it comes early and predictably. there isn’t the Longing for spring that i experience here, with winter dragging on and on, people forgetting what the sun actually looks like, umbrellas actually wearing out from use. so when i smell the smell, i’m reassured that yes we Will have a Spring afterall. sweet.