August

We are made to remember.

The smell in the air the last week of July tells me August is coming. Two-a-day high school football practices were preceded by the odor of August.  Locker rooms and sweat were announced by the smell of grass.  Growing up in the country in upstate New York, aromas had their own meaning.  I lived next to a barn with cows: in all honesty, to this day, the scent of manure makes me smile.  Bean fields had their own fragrance and there was nothing like the snap of a green bean mixed with the aroma-taste of its raw sweetness.  The huge garden I tended lent itself to a jumble of smells—tomatoes, corn, peppers, beets—each had a signature scent; the bouquet of vegetables told me the fruit of my labor was coming soon.  As I was on one of my early morning walks at the end of July, my nose told me it’s almost August.

Our noses bring back memories.  Until 2004, however, the science of smell was a mystery.  Nobel Prize researchers discovered important details that year about how our noses are designed.  Odors are detected by receptors in the nose processed in the brain and nervous system.  A diverse medley of molecules excite some of the five million receptor cells in the nasal cavity. These cells generate coded electrical signals and send them to the brain.  A rose and a skunk might be recognized by some of the same receptors. But the brain deciphers those signals and goes on to distinguish ten thousand separate and distinct odors.  Now, what amazes me is that it was not until 2004 that science could explain our sniffing sense.  The scientific explanation is marvelous, but honestly, I didn’t need science to tell me what my own nose tells me every day.

My little sister purchased a fragrance diffuser for me last year: the sweet smell of spruce arouses my nose, now causing a slight smile to cross my lips as I enter my office.  At the moment I strike the keyboard to write these words, the bottled aroma of a mountain lodge wafts ‘round me.  Another memory from childhood—living in the deep woods of Camden, New York during the summertime—moves my nose to tell my brain, “Do you remember when?”  I love those smells, I love those memories.  The two go hand-in-hand.  Sure, there are some stenches we would rather forget.  But there are good memories in the aroma of life, things we don’t want to pass by.  August, October, December, they all have their own scent; a scent that helps us make sense of our world.

For Moody Radio, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, personally seeking truth, wherever it’s found.  To be broadcast on Moody Radio, August, 2011.