Rain at last. Not just a spritzy tease like the last few *almost* rain showers we’ve experienced in the last couple of weeks. but real rain. Last night. Again this morning. And yet again this afternoon. Several soaking rains after many weeks of rainless drought. Lifeless lawns and leaves will begin to green again. Vitality will rebound. Perhaps petrichor and eucalyptus are the perfume of rejuvenation…
As a busy end-of-August week winds down I’ve swapped today’s intended dispatch for a hint of the smells that swept my mind into meditative overdrive today.
“It’s Teddi,” she said as she entered the icehouse this morning. I was up in my loft office revising a post titled, “Poetics of Home”.
“Good morning, Teddi,” I responded.
She was gathering vases to empty last week’s flower arrangements and replace with new blooms. I picked up the vase next to my standing desk and inhaled the arrangement. The fragrance was gone. “The eucalyptus has lost it scent,” I commented with rueful exaggeration as I descended the stairs to hand her the vase.
“There might be more this week…” Teddi said, smiling. I hoped so silently as I returned to the loft, to work, to the “Poetics of Home”.
I’m not sure exactly how much later it was – maybe 15 to 30 minutes max, I’d guess – when I wrapped up, saved my work, and headed back downstairs. I had a couple of errands to run, so I’d need to wrap up today’s post this afternoon. I grabbed my ball cap and sunglasses and headed outside.
It had rained early this morning, and a second wave of rain had fallen in the last hour or so. As I inhaled the outdoors, the unmistakable smell of petrichor caught me off guard, awakening a flood of poignant memories. I walked slowly to the house, pulling petrichor perfumed air into lungs, savoring each breath.
Perhaps Petrichor
Mumbling August,
rum-rum-rumbling thunder,
petrichor pipe dreams.
Carley greeted me at the mudroom entrance, lead me to the kitchen where Susan and Teddi were in conversation. The island was a jungle of floral ingredients. Teddi, pulling from one pile, then another, was arranging bouquets. I barged in chattering away about petrichor.
“Do you know what petrichor is?” Susan asked Teddi, as if apologizing for my intoxicated muttering. Teddi nodded, no, and Susan went on. “It’s that smell right after a rain.”
I continued, “Especially the smell of rain after a dry spell. Or in the desert.”
I associate the smell with Santa Fe much more than Essex. But even more than Santa Fe, it reminds me of the Maasai Mara. It reminds me of the day that Susan and I were married in a tribal wedding in the remote bush near the Kenya-Tanzania border, with distant storms brewing and showers close enough to provoke excitement among the Maasai. Their enthusiasm was translated from Swahili to English for our benefit. Apparently it was a good omen to have rain on your wedding day. It was an indication of fertility. Nevertheless we were relieved when our open air wedding did not include a downpour. But the smell of distant rain in the desert still holds the poignant promise that we made to each other those 20 years ago, to spend our earthly lives together, as we confirmed the covenant that we’d already been living for more than four years at that point, that we’ve been honoring for two decades.
So for me that smell of petrichor is a time machine that transports me back to late afternoon on September 29, 2005 in the Massai Mara. Distant storm clouds, but perfect weather around us. Throat singing, jump-dancing, and petrichor.
As I shared these memories aloud, I realized that the head-clearing aroma I was enjoying was no longer petrichor.
Perhaps Eucalyptus
The entire kitchen was ripe with the aroma of eucalyptus. I leaned over, plunging my head into the middle of a bucket full of eucalyptus bows from which Teddi was extracting individual sprays for her arrangements. With my head in the middle of the silvery blue green foliage, I felt like I was inhaling and exhaling, inhaling and exhaling through every pore of my being.
There’s a distinct sort of alertness, a brightening that happens for me, maybe for everyone, in the presence of eucalyptus. This invigorating essence makes me feel more alive, awake, and alert.
Recently, I associate the smell with our visits to Santa Barbara, Montecito, and Carpinteria, while visiting my nieces in boarding school. Before that there were a few scattered Southern California memories from my early 20s and an even more pronounced nostalgia for hot days and nights in Santiago, Chile in 1992. I’ve yearned ever since for the opportunity to live within close olfactory proximity to eucalyptus trees.
While Essex, New York and Santa Fe, New Mexico, aren’t exactly viable environments for eucalyptus trees, it turns out that the Silver Dollar Tree (Eucalyptus cinerea) eucalyptus Teddi has incorporated into our arrangements lately is being propagated locally as an annual by a local flower grower. Next year we must grow eucalyptus!
From Petrichor to eucalyptus within minutes, a tidy economy of time, these two aromatics transport me instantly to prior periods in my life. And yet, despite the poignance with which these smells are invested, it is the invigorating, bronchial dilating, head popping clarity that I’m unable to resist. It’s as if both fine-tune the squelch on reality, elevating it to an even higher level — more focused, sharper contrast, more color saturated, and less blurry — than it was before I inhaled petrichor and eucalyptus.
What do you think?