Holding Down the Fort

I'm a big fan of scented candles. Not the strong ones that give you a headache or force you to leave a room. Just the pleasant ones like the Bath & Body Works Caramel Pumpkin Latte one I have burning in the living room.

If the scent is right, it not only covers up the smell of cat and teenage boy, but gives you comfort or stirs up a good memory -- usually involving family or food.

That's the magic of our sense of smell. Today I stumbled across a scent that had me right back in my front yard as a grade-schooler.

I was out for a run over lunch hour. When I was cooling down, I walked right past a tree that had lost all its ugly brown leaves and I could smell my childhood front yard.

I don't even know what kind of tree we had -- I think an elm or box elder or something. It was big enough for climbing and a good shade tree. But come fall, it did not produce the lovely orange and yellow and red leaves like the maples do. Just plain ol' dead tan ones. And they had a distinctive scent to them (distinctive enough to remember today).

And they were crunchy. It was not fun jumping in a pile of those, I tell you. So we made alternate entertainment plans.

My sisters and I would sort of rake long thin rows of leaves to form the outside of a fort. Not a high-walled structure; more like a floor-plan blue-print. We'd have "walls" dividing the kitchen, living room and bedrooms -- sometimes a bed outlined, too, so we could lay our dolls down for a nap. I guess we called it a fort, but it was more like playing house. And it was a lot of fun.

I guess I forgot all about that. Glad I got outside today. And glad my nose wasn't too stuffed to make me miss my trip down memory lane.

Take some time to stop and smell the leaves this fall. You never know what you might be missing.