Home

This morning as part of my new routine, I tried to catch a quick walk before the weather turned uber nasty. Mom wanted to exercise as well, but she only made it a block. Since I thought we were going to be going together, I did not bring my ipod and found myself suddenly left to my own thoughts.

Dangerous place that.

I really had nothing to think about or have conversation about with myself. So it got pretty boring pretty fast.

And then, as I found myself thinking about, well, nothing…I started noticing something. With my mouth unoccupied, I was able to appreciate other senses I usually ignore. I took a deep breath. I love the way fall smells. Spring as well. Summer just smells like sweat so that’s gross. Winter…I just love the smells associated with the holidays but winter itself is pretty lame.

But back to autumn.

I could smell the trees, the air was crisp and fresh (it had rained the day before) and someone was burning wood. I love the smell of burning wood. So I smiled and took another deep breath.

Which opened up a whole new train of thought.

Why do I love the smell of burning wood? And this time as I took a breath, I closed my eyes and let my mind float on the scent filtering through my senses. Suddenly I was back 25 or so, and we were sitting around a fire in the Uinta mountains at one of our many family campouts. It was always cold enough during the summer in the Utah mountains that a fire was a welcome source of comfort, warmth and light. And food. S’mores. Hot Dogs. And those funky hollowed out oranges with muffin mix in them. We would talk, laugh, and sing. So much singing. The worst part of the night was removing myself from the sweet warm circle of the flames reach to tuck myself into a carefully laid out sleeping bag stuffed with extra blankets. I would lay and listen to the breeze in the pines, the sound of the lake or the creek (there seemed to always be one or the other) and the last hiss and crackle of the fire as is sputtered and died to coals, sleeping as we did until it was needed in the morning.

I took another deep breath.

My thoughts progressed.

I loved the smell of the crisp, wet air in the trees because it meant I was surrounded by living and moving things…trees and water . Plus the smell of the earth after rain…so utterly cleansing. I grew up in Wyoming and rain was a novelty…so I lingered on those moments when the world smelled new. Those things make me feel more peaceful than anything else. I could find my nirvana by a gurgling stream in a secluded glen.

And suddenly there were dozen smells I didn’t smell at that moment that I suddenly realized could transport me just as readily to moments and memories in my life great and small.

New leather book smell take me to New York where I spent 4 weeks as a cast member of the Hill Cumorah Pageant after my senior year. I took my brand new scriptures with me (a graduation gift from my grandparents)and we were challenged to read the entire Book of Mormon in 10 days. When we weren’t rehearsing or learning how to be good missionaries, my nose was buried in that book , curled up in the shade of the very hill where the plates had been hidden before they became the book I now inhaled as quickly as I did the heavy New York air.

I touched an evergreen bush, and my mind moved to another smell I adore; pine. Growing up so close to the mountains, I never knew there were such things as fake Christmas trees. Anyone who had them was ridiculous in my mind. We would go together with other families up into the mountains to a place called Christmas Tree Meadows and ride snowmobiles to where we would pick out the perfect tree. My dad always liked the ones that were not bushy…plenty of nooks and crannies we could nestle our collection of ornaments in. And my dad is a very gifted light putter-onner. And I never thought tinsel looked as elegant and extraordinary as it did draped around one of those trees. And it smelled fantastic. It filled the house with this amazing scent I still can’t chase from my mind. And they are attached to beautiful moments of my life…my sister and I faithfully organizing and reorganizing the gifts under the tree, cheeseball and crackers, finally realizing that mysteriously Dad and Santa’s writing was quite similar…a thousand beautiful pictures of my past that make up a mass of who I am in the present.

I was home by then.

So I paused. And I realized that I needed more moments of silence and reflection in my life to ground me more thoroughly…but more importantly to remind me of home.

But was there something I was missing? Are there things I’m too busy to notice that remind of my first home? Do I miss being brought back to tender memories I could relish in because I’m too busy to let the cue from my surroundings consume me?

If I stopped for a moment…maybe.

Just maybe I could go home.