Smells of summer

With all our traveling this month I have noticed how each locality has its distinct smell. Las Vegas smells of heat, Albany's rich with grass scent, and Clarkston smells like home.

Today's the quintessential summer day -- 85 degrees, slight breeze, lawnmowers buzzing in the distance, robins chirping "cheerio" from the sycamore, and sprinklers shooshing back and forth in the front yard. But it's the smell that says I'm home.

I've enjoyed each place we've traveled this week, but Clarkston has just the mix of weeds, lawn, heat, dust, stink bugs and juniper that smells exactly like summer. The first summer we moved into our house, we lay in bed one night listening to the crickets chirruping from the back yard. That's when we knew we were home. Seattle doesn't have crickets and their song was something we realized we missed as soon as we heard their chorus once again.

The thing I have found is that each of our places has some elements of home. The expanse of sagebrush that scrolls out toward the mountains in Las Vegas takes me back to Wyoming. I love the immensity of the valley -- how small I feel once I leave the city's grid. The evening I stepped from the plane in Corvallis and inhaled the cool air, rich with the smell of cow manure and grass fields, I nearly burst into tears. It took me straight back to Scipio, or the night in Tremonton when the smell of the hay fields flooded over the city park after the 4th of July fireworks as Steve and I lay on the grass before heading home.

It only takes a whiff and you know you're home, wherever you are. And right now I'm here. I'm really home.