Outside in the Fresh Air – Smells matter too

This winter I have been doing most of my bike rides on the indoor trainer. Riding indoors is nice because I can do it while I watch my Continuing Education units for work. I can do it while the kids are playing video games and still keep an ear out for anything going wrong. I can ride the trainer before or after the sun comes up. It’s not cold or wet on the trainer inside. Dogs never chase me on the trainer, although sometimes I think my cat is going to get her whiskers caught in my spokes.

Because it was the New Years and I wanted to start the year off right, I forced myself to get outdoors on the real roads on my bike yesterday. It was chilly, but I dressed with extra layers and knew I would warm up when the bike got moving. I knew the sun in the sky and the sights would help get me out of my quarantine funk. The biggest surprise yesterday was how much I noticed the smells of the outdoors.

On my trainer, I don’t really notice any smells. My house is my house and I am long passed noticing what my house smells like. I only get occasional whiffs of my sweaty shirt or my coffee. Out on the aquaduct in winter, you get the slightly swampy smell of the aquaduct algae drying in the puddles from the rain. It’s cold and moist outside right now, so you can really smell the cow manure as you past the dairy farms. I could smell the moist soil of the neighbors’ orchards and the scent of the lavender farm up the road. Sometimes, in late summer, I can smell the fermentation of apricots rotting.

What’s so important about smells? Sometimes in our digital world, we can go the whole day in 2D virtual worlds. Stinky cow manure is the opposite end of existence from that. The moist soil is literally connecting us to the earth. The moist breezes and lavender patches bring us back to our reptilian brain and connect us viscerally to the here and now. They prove we are out in the world and remind us what we are connected to. They let us connect to the world with one of our most primal senses.

How can you connect to the world outside more deeply? What can you smell today? Will it be your neighbor’s chimney or the dog park? What can you use as today’s reminder of our connection to the real world out there?