Lemons, roses, and summer rain falling across a long
dry land: each has a smell that overwhelms.
Add huckleberries to that.
The scent of a freshly halved lemon is crisp and
keen—it has an edge. Taking in the
scent deeply feels very nearly like running your thumb along the blade of a
newly sharpened knife. The scent of
lemon has become associated with cleanliness.
Roses fill the air with a fragrance that whisks
about you and tickles you the way silken scarves might if you stood amid them
in a gentle flow of wind. Sweet and soft:
the aroma of roses. Romantic.
Rain to dry land releases the very essence of earth
and stone. If you close your eyes and
draw in the smell of new rain, you quickly understand why the roots of bull
pine reach so greedily to grasp at more.
Huckleberries smell like the color purple. Their scent soaks deep into your hands as the
violet juice dyes your fingertips while you gather them. When huckleberries ripen in their mountain
home, whole valleys turn purple with their aroma. As the summer heat permeates the deep forest
floor, the air fills with huckleberry—the smell a mix of earth and nectar and
snow melting against shale.
The high mountain valleys of Montana have just this week turned purple.
--Mitchell
Hegman
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