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This column doesn’t stink: Top 10 favorite outdoor smells

By Dave Bates for The Observer-Reporter newsroom@observer-Reporter.Com 6 min read

As I make my way down Jensen Hollow on my almost nightly walk, I step on a black walnut and roll my ankle. I do not injure myself nor do I really interrupt my walk. I don’t even utter those types of words that go with such self-injurious occasions.

As I arrive at this momentary stoppage of my walk, I find myself standing in the quiet of a bend in the road with a strange smile on my face. I bend over and pick a walnut off the macadam, staring deeply into its greeness. Momentarily lost in the deep green color of the fruit, I hear a car approaching around the bend. I pull myself together just in time to see my neighbor drive past. I smile and wave, attempting to fake some semblance of normalcy and that I’m not having an interlude with a walnut.

One of my favorite smells is that of a black walnut, still in its husk, slightly softening in its texture, giving off that pungent yet aromatic fragrance that is my fall. Ahhhhh. … Fall has begun!

The first time I smell a walnut up close in the season is my own personal autumn onset. I had noticed walnuts on the road during previous walks but chose to ignore them like an acquaintance to be avoided in the grocery store. It was not time to sample their fruit just yet. The best walnuts for sniffing are those that are softening to the point that their dark innards are just beginning to ooze out the cracks in the husk.

And then it hit me: How many great smells come with the outdoors?

Don’t get me wrong, there are some fantastic smells that do not necessarily originate with the outdoors. For example, babies. All babies just smell good, minus the spoiled milk smell as well as other odoriferous emanations that are implicitly linked to babies. Homemade chocolate chip cookies. Baseball glove leather. My wife’s perfume. All great smells but not naturally occuring in nature.

As I complete my walk I think of all the great smells tied to the great outdoors. My list is nowhere near complete. I need your help to finish. Hopefully, we’ll have something to argue about and you can enlighten me as to what I’m missing. Here’s my list in no particular order:

Black walnut husks –

  • I have already covered them in the above paragraph

Hoppes No. 9 –

  • This scent indicates you have already fired a gun and places me in the right frame of mind. It exudes manliness in a bottle.

Decaying leaves (the dryer and crunchier the better)

  • Whether they are in piles from raking or blowing along a roadside ditch or just spread out across the lawn, one must lie down in them and have a sniff. I especially like the way that they permeate clothing and the smell lasts all day.

Dogs –

  • I know that there are some that will cry, “dogs stink” and have no place on this list. To them I would say “Sir, you have no soul.” Truly you have never experienced the love of a four-legged friend, devoted to you without question since the day you brought her home. She lies at your feet, longing to rest her foot on top of yours. Her scent wafts up from under the desk enabling you to write deeper than you’ve ever known possible. With each breath your nostrils are filled with every wonderful day you’ve shared afield.

Gun leather –

  • It’s kind of like baseball glove leather only more awesome and dangerous by nature.

Rain –

  • Summer rain on a hot day, lightly blowing in your face as it begins to wet the pavement.

Pine bows –

  • Perhaps I have spent a few too many seasons at Ralph Bell’s Christmas tree farm? To me, pine is not just a smell of Christmas, but rather, it is Christmas. Fir trimmings may be the best outdoor smell of all. I would travel back to Greene County from Grove City to spend Sunday afternoons, sitting in a reclaimed chicken coop in front of a kerosene stove. A mixture of oil and gasoline permeating the air. Talking with my old friend Ralph, learning about life, sipping coffee and munching on my wife’s homemade chocolate chip cookies. It smells like Christmas.

Apples –

  • There is an apple tree in a long forgotten orchard somewhere up around Port Allegany that is part of an overgrown homestead. My brother and I traditionally end our grouse hunt at that spot so we could fill our pockets with the best tasting apples I have ever known. I would like to smell them again, one day.

Burnt gunpowder –

  • I don’t even pretend to begin to know how to sum up its fragrance. Anything I might write wouldn’t do justice. I’ll just let it waft up from the page like it is rising from the broken barrels of my favorite double gun following an excellent shot on a woodcock.

Ten is for you. Share your favorite smell with us.

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