Nice essay about scents and places. When I come home after having been away for a while, I really savor the smell in the air when I walk in the door. There is a certain staleness in it, but it still carries in it the remnants of incense that I burn in the living room. That is the recognizable part of the "home" smell. There are other components that are not easily described but belong to this home. Reading this essay got me thinking if I would recognize my home by smell no matter where I was, if it was really that unique. Conversely, if that smell in some other place could make it home instantly. Maybe there is value in homing a fragrance first and taking it along in a travel diffuser. There is no universal smell of rain on dry earth - something I had never paid attention to before but will now
The airy scent that follows rain is known as petrichor, and there are many forms. The petrichor in Singapore, for example, will be quite different from that of Reykjavik. The desert smells most intensely after a sudden summer downpour, when the plants release their oils, when the soil opens its pores to the sky. Nevertheless, perfumers have identified a common essence to petrichor: the chemical compound geosmin. It takes its name from the Greek words for “earth” and “smell.” In small amounts—and we are able to detect very small amounts of geosmin, down to 10 parts per trillion, akin to a stick of incense diffused through the entire Empire State Building—it smells familiar and musty, a little minerally, a little dirty, but in a nice way. In larger doses, it can come across mildewy and rank, like dirty laundry left in a damp basement. In nature, geosmin is produced by certain species of blue-green algae that live within soil, and is part of the fragrance bouquet that gets released into the air before, during, and after the high desert gets hit by rain
Comments