I was struck by something when I walked out of work on Tuesday to drive home for lunch. My coworkers and I spent the morning observing the pall of wildfire smoke descend upon us. A sheet of white slowly swallowed the spine of the hills rimming our valley. We could not tell where the sky ended.

“It smells like dead bodies out there,” said one coworker rushing back from her lunch.

“What?!” replied another.

“Yeah. Like dead bodies, dead bodies.”

“That’s disgusting.”

So when I left for lunch, I was curious to confirm her statement. I banged out the door, and wham! The smell hit my nostrils and instantly transported me.

To my grandma’s greenhouse– early spring. She’s just stoked the woodstove, and all the escaped smoke wisps through the air, circling against the plastic roof in opaque tendrils— white against white. I smell the bags of potting soil, cold and rich with moisture. I can see the old entryway my Grandpa built with its insulation boards markered by childish graffiti. This is what greeted all customers when they came to buy their flowers.

And all of this is what I smell in that smoke-hazed air. I walk to my car, doing what no one else has probably done, breathing deeply.

I look up at the red-bleached sun and think, what a strange place to find this. It doesn’t smell of dead bodies but of dormant memories and all the little things only called up by errant scents or waves of deja vu.

How strange.

© 2023 Katie Baker