Smelling Daphnes for the first time in May is the single greatest pleasure I have in my life that comes around reliably every year. I got my first daphne right after my first son was born, when I was living in the first house I bought with my future ex-husband No. 2. I picked it up at the botanical gardens annual sale because they marked it as “grows well in Colorado.” I wasn’t much of a gardener at that point, and I’m thinking, yes! Easy to grow here works.
A couple of years after I planted it, I was walking up my front sidewalk, and this smell assaulted my nose – one of the prettiest, liting smells I’ve ever experienced. Unexpected, I had no idea daphnes smelled, and it took me a couple of days to verify that it was the daphne. During its blooming period, right along with that gorgeous scent was this otherness – bitter, a little fecal. It wasn’t always there, sometimes it was just the beautiful part. It’s deeply unpleasant and disturbing.
And I don’t care. It is the wide chasm between the two – the sweet and the obscene – that I love as they stand together in this perfect tension. Much of the time we spend our life avoiding that which is not lovely, even though it must exist to have the other. All the old sayings are true – you must have evil to know good; dark must exist to know light; and joy can only be known if you know its opposite, pain and despair. It is natural to want to pay attention to the things that are pretty, they capture us, there is nothing to hate there. But when you let sweet and obscene lay next to each other, not preferring one or the other, just letting them take up the same space, that is when you can experience both completely. That is when I experience life fully.
Recently I smelled a couple of the new Atelier Colognes, Orange Sanguine and Bois Blonds – they are both lovely and bright and easy to wear, and I highly recommend them during the summer for a light go-to scent that you will appreciate and not wish you had worn something different. But March sent out a Facebook update last night about Amaranthine and some other gigantic white floral she had on in the East Coast heat, and I kinda recoiled at first. Then I dug out my Penhaligon’s Amaranthine, which I’ve reviewed before as a big, interesting love, sprayed it on, and swooned again.
It is little points of joy piercing the dark gutter it came from. Or, as my son Harry says, “look at me skank.”
This morning, when I got back home after my 6a yoga class, I opened my truck door, stepped out, and the daphne, which had been blooming for about a week, had unfurled its scent. Life begins again.
So let’s do a giveaway. I was hopeful for a minute that I was actuallly going to be able to get into Posse the normal way. It let me log into our dashboard to start posting, but then when I tried to save, it gave me the familiar “can’t find this” error, so I can’t play with you in comments again. 🙁 Tell me what scent – occurring in nature or from a bottle – that makes you feel closest to life, and I’ll give away samples of the two Ateliers mentioned and Amaranthine.
This is neither natural nor even very pretty, but: waking up in a strange city. Stepping outside your hotel and smelling pavement, coffee vendors, bakeries, women’s perfume, men’s aftershave, car exhaust, busses or streetcars or trains you’ve never ridden before, and that certain something that makes every city smell different. I always think, “Wow, people LIVE here (New York, Rome, Paris, wherever).”
That’s exciting! Yes, it does make one feel alive, to be in a new place.
Fresh cut grass – you can smell it even in the middle of the city and it always serves as a reminder for me to slow down and appreciate the world and my life for a moment. 😉
Lovely post, P! Please enter me in the draw.
Thanks!
Lilac, absolutely, without a doubt. Here in eastern Canada there is a mad abundance of lilac, which seems to thrive on the cold winters, and when it blooms, usually in late May or early June, it’s a sure sign that spring has hit a fever pitch and summer is just around the corner. I have never lived anywhere that there weren’t at least a half-dozen lilac bushes within eyeshot, and so every spring of my life the air has always been threaded and beribboned with that magical perfume.
Unfortunately, they’ve been blooming a bit earlier than usual these last few years, and I’m out of the country for the last two weeks of May and the first week of June, so I bet I’m going to miss it all. Do they have lilac in England?
I love the smell of earth baking in the hot sun — sadly, as I spend more and more time indoors and in an office these days I smell it only rarely anymore.
I’d love to try Amaranthine and the Ateliers. Thank you.
That acrid, smoky oxonic smell the wheels and engines of trains exude. I love that smell.
…and that would be ozonic, not oxonic. Oh, well.
I live in a city, and whenever I can get a bit farther out and smell cleaner air – purified by vegetation and without the auto exhaust – that’s the scent of life!
I’ve already sample Amaranthine but would love to try either Atelier.
Hope you get your internet fixed and can rejoin us soon!
Wow an overload of wonderful descriptions here, making me think yes yes yes as I read each one….
I think perhaps the most poignantly powerful smell that is at the top of my mind though is simply the wafting of night-scented flowers like datura and white cestrum on a warm summer breeze, outside, in the dark; but its SO hard to choose!
At the beach, I love the contrast between nature: the salty tang of an ocean breeze, seaweed, briny water and then I might get a whiff of the blatantly artificial like suntan lotion, or snow cone flavor syrup or cotton candy. That’s a great combo to me.
Other great ones that have already been mentioned: children’s heads when they’ve been outside running, playing and sweating a little bit. Then they crawl up in your lap before their bath, and smell a bit sweet and sweaty. Also, the great smell of a warm kitty cat who has been basking in the sun.
Please enter me in the drawing. I’m curious about the scents mentioned; haven’t tried any of them yet. Thanks.
Too many smells to choose just one but on the West Coast it’s the smell of eucalyptus, just before a rainstorm.
Over here, it’s the smell of line-dried sheets – that is such a comforting smell.
Don’t enter me in the draw, though – I’ve already tested.
beautiful post, btw. Just lovely.
xoxo >-)
The smell of burning leaves on a cool, dark autumn day with winter just around the corner
Sycamore trees near the river, it smells like my childhood. And
gingerbread.
My son’s unwashed hair. I used to bury my face into it when we read books together on the couch when he was little, but now he’s 7 and is surly and wants his space. So I only get to smell his sweet hair when I kiss him on the head before bed.
Out of the bottle, at the moment, Voleur de Roses or N. Morris’ Midnight Forest.
That’s a tough one but I think it’d be freshly cut grass for me. But yesterday I got to play in piles of dried leaves with my kids. The smell was heavenly. It’s been a long time since I felt so alive.
Please enter me in the draw 🙂
Very hard question. I thought about it all day. I’m thrilled about the poetry in so many responses here. I wracked my brains for a fragrance I had that had an element (a samsara element?)of life meets death meets life again and could think of not a one so mysterious.
So in the natural world I’m allied with the ocean people. There is very particular smell in certain weather (perhaps low pressure fronts?) that is utterly intoxicating and bewitching…and damp, cedar, driftwood, seaweed, salt super-oxygenated that occurs…where the vapours blowing a few feet off the sea are like a concentrated elixir of life.
ahhhhh!!!!!!!!!!
Cheryl
Wow, I can’t pick just one! Here are some majors though:
Lilacs after a rain, tomato leaves, basil growing in the sun with its fragrant oil glistening on the leaves, tall trumpet lilies in the twilight throwing off perfume like it was smoke, warm horseflesh, Jean Patou Vacances perfume, the smell of lake water in high summer, hay drying in a field and yes, DAPHNE! :d
Hmmmm, a very interesting question. Closest to life. I guess I’d have to say the smell of the ground thawing and things getting green in spring would be one of them. That smell always makes me feel hopeful and alive. And the other is probably the smell of the fur on my dog’s face when I give him a face-nuzzle. Clean puppy-scent.
I have my fingers crossed for the draw, but for now I’m going to go nuzzle my dog and then go smell the outdoors. 😉
Freshly-watered lawn makes me feel closest to life — specifically suburban life.
Creosote after a rain.
For me it has always been the smell of the wind when a summer storm is rolling in (when the thunder is rumbling and just before the sky explodes with rain) and the wind is blowing through the leaves of the trees. You can smell the rain, and the ozone, and electricty, and the green of the leaves. That scent makes me feel joy, and excitement, and a tinge of melancholy and nostalgia, all at once, and that mix of emotions really is the essence of life to me.
Then again, warm sun-baked kitty fur is a close second for me too, especially if its black kitty fur. 🙂 Thanks everyone for the marvelous entries, such a joy to read today! And please enter me in the draw Patty!
Right now – inside my greenhouse.
Your daphnes seem to bloom – and smell different – to daphnes over here…:-?
My dream-a greenhouse. My best friends growing up were twins, their mom owned a greenhouse/floral shop. I spent all my growing up years wandering down the aisles of the
greenhouse, sniffing and inhaling.
Lilacs.
Worn leather purse.
Smell of dirt, after evening showers on a warm summer day.
The spicy, pungent scent of California Bay Laurel that permeates the redwood forests in Santa Cruz and the SF Bay Area. Every time I see a Bay Tree, I pick a leaf and crush it between my fingers, and it reminds me once and again of why I love living here….
How could I forget this one, too? I was a four-year-old in Los Altos, CA (south of SF down a meandering two-lane highway through apricot orchards in those days – now, like, a 20-lane mega-expressway). When I smelled PG’s Bois Blond for the first time, I was right back THERE again the second I inhaled. My charge card hit the counter before I was finished exhaling.
My cousins lived in Los Altos in those days! We always took the hilly route from Pacifica– how well I remember the lovely drive down Skyline Blvd and Canada Rd, then through the orchards. . .
nina, I visited Muir Woods on a brief trip to San Francisco, and just adored the scent. I assumed it was the redwood trees – are you saying that’s really the laurel?
Yes, it was the Bay Laurel (and isn’t the Muir Woods one of the most glorious places on earth?). The Bay trees are much smaller and grow below the redwoods. Their leaves literally are “Bay Leaves,” the herb (like what you buy in the jar). The heat of the sun really seems to bring out their fragrance. Every visitor I take hiking gets my Bay Leaf speech and demonstration. (Of course the redwoods have a scent, too, but not as strong as the Bay trees.)
The smell of rain-moistened, hot asphalt. It’s the most grounding scent in the world.
And for the exaltation side, the smell of hot hay, deerstongue, and wild anise in the sun. Heavenly.
For me, it would be piney woods and a freshwater lake nearby – reminding me of summer vacations long ago, and a connection to a world that Does Not Have Computers, for a little while!
The “one” scent? For me there are probably several, but here are two very important:
Orange blossom wafting from Central Valley groves on warm summer night air.
Cool moist sea air mixed with creosote and a whiff of rotting seaweed– it simultaneously wakes me up and soothes me with a sense of coming home (native of San Francisco).
I grew up on a dairy farm in upstate NY with lots of cows, cows, cows. All that was gone by the time I was 14. Now, when I smell cow manure, I’m a kid again.
Please enter me in the drawing.
For me it’s the smell that lingers after a summer storm – the wet earth, the steaming concrete, the rain puddles left behind. It’s a smell that reminds me of playing in the rain with my sisters – an activity that we looked forward to every spring as we were growing up. It was one of the few times that we were allowed to get wet, muddy and wild and didn’t have to act like “young ladies”! In short, it’s a smell that represents a sort of freedom to me.
I’m really intrigued by the Orange Sanguine – wonder how it compares to my recent fave Soivohle Moroccan Orange? Please enter me in the drawing.
Dirt. The earth when you kneel down and bring your nose right up close to it, particularly in spring when you breathe in the scent of cold as well as soil.
Love this poll. Mine are tomato leaves, the smell of the air right before a thunder storm and the smell of the wet pavement after, dried fall leaves on the wet ground, a wood burning fireplace, lilacs in the night air, the smell of brewing coffee while taking a morning walk, a freshly struck match, my dog’s paws. I don’t need to be entered in the drawing. I have and love Amaranthine and I am wearing it today.
It’s amazing and quite beautiful reading everyone’s ideas of “smells that bring you closer to life”. For me, nothing brings me closer to life then the smell of my 7 year old black Lab, Gypsy. As much as I try to wash the skanky-ness out of her every other week (she actually doesn’t mind baths and believe it or not, prefers coconut-scented shampoos!!!!), inevitably she eventually smells musky, salty, sweet and just a bit like cheese…..I realize that may sound a bit disgusting, but nothing makes me feel happier or closer to life then smelling her fur as she nuzzles against me when I come home from work. Ahhhh….it makes me smile just thinking about it.
Woodsmoke on a cool fall night.
Ack, how could I forget?
Oh, this was such a lovely thread to wake up to this morning. The comments have transported me all over the place, and I love the sensitivity to nature, places, sensations – life!
I related to so much: Louise’s Douglas Firs in the Pacific Northwest (and cedars! and cottonwoods in the spring, so sweet and green), Patty’s daphne (P, please include me in the draw) and similar spring blooms that combine freshness and something compellingly rank, rain on hot stones or pavement after weeks of scorching summer sunshine, the ocean (throw in a little creosote), garlic, freshly ground coffee, soil and grass (I just flopped on the field at Jericho Park yesterday, which was carpeted by a zillion little white flowers, and inhaled that loamy/galbanum-green richness), the smell of our local Japanese restaurant’s robata grill wafting down the street — and our own steaks on the barbie in the summertime . . . all of it just bliss.
But what smells most like life to me, the most vital and heartbreaking thing, is to hold my dear little purple budgie Lulu, exhale into her neck feathers, and then inhale deeply. Oh, the smell of the clean, warm damp feathers of a healthy little 34-gram bird: heaven.
That’s amazing, years ago I noticed my little pied cockatiel female had a wonderful warm waxy smell, so unexpected….the male doesn’t!
Whew! I’m relieved that few people managed to keep it to just one scent. Here is my Top 5 from nature:
• pine forest after a summer rain
• lily of the valley (any day now)
• lilacs (any minute now)
• wet wood in an old school sauna
• white freesia (surprise, surprise)
I love the smell of Coppertone and the briny, stinky smell of tidal pools. That smell takes me back to my favorite childhood memories of being at the beach with my family.
That is a wonderful mixture. Coppertone in itself is the most evocative scents for me, though associated more strongly with swimming pools.
“one of the most evocative” is what I should have typed.
Reading all these posts right now make me so sad because I can’t smell A THING!!! I’ve had a sinus problem for one full week now and completely lost my sense of taste and (horrors) smell since Monday. It is making me insane, especially since I just received a packet of samples from LS and just look at them lovingly, unable to sniff. I have a panic attack almost everyday thinking of what I’m missing out on smelling. It is torture but I know that once my sense of smell returns, I will never take it for granted again, ever.
The smells that make me feel closest to life are : Demeter’s Dirt, hot dogs on the grill, burning leaves, wet boardwalk, and cat fur after lying in the sun.
Wanted to add that the technical term for the scent emanating from certain crystals is crystalline musk, a pungent, musky earth smell.
Tamara, your post made me teary eyed-beautiful!
The smell of my childrens’ hair–it’s sort of burnt lanolin smell. Their necks when they were little–now of course they won’t let me smell their necks. Clean, well-kept horses. The pittisporum plants blooming around the neighborhood. The chihuahua, after he has been playing in the sunshine. And coffee–fresh and lots of it, especially when the smell wafts to my nose and I am still half asleep, and know that my husband is lovingly bringing me a mug.
Walking into the barn, rich smell of worn leather, hay, manure, breathing in the horsey scents, pine sap pulled off my fir trees and rolled between my fingers, inhaling my gardenia, laying on the beach, nose dug into a damp salty sea moistened towel, mincing garlic and bringing my fingers to my nose, digging into deep rich earth as I garden, midnight Harley rides in spring, face pressed into leather, all the smells ripping open my senses, clover, new mown grass, freshly plowed fields, whatever scent ‘he’ is wearing wafting back to me. I love to press my face into tree bark. Last week a friend brought me a bag of morel mushrooms he’d just dug out of his yard which I inhaled deeply before cooking-divine. And lastly, I collect/dig gems on a serious level and the smell of crystalline is addictive.
CB Violet Empire comes close to earth/flower in a bottle.
Patty, I’m sorry you can’t comment. I’m now gonna get me some daphne.
Hrm. If I had to pick just one thing, I’d say the smell of my son’s clean hair after he’s been playing in the sunshine.
I’d have to say Osmanthus – coming from a Chinese family, this flower is a part of my childhood both in the gardens in Taiwan and in my desserts! We sprinkle the dried, yellow flowers over sweet soups, and it is lovely as the fragrance steams up to your face. My aunt has a tree that is mindblowingly fragrant – but in a gentle way! – when it blooms.
My garden is loaded with fragrant flowers – roses, lilies, iris, honeysuckle, etc. And I wear floral fragrances nearly every day of the year. But…as much as I need florals, I can’t say they connect me to life itself, as much as to other, more specific facets of existence.
The smell of garlic hitting the pan gives me such a charge that I (only half-jokingly) say to my kids, “garlic is life.”
But two smells strike at the core of life for me in a way that is almost scary – ambergris and honey. Ambergris is like some magical, dangerous water that one would willingly drown oneself in to get to the source of life itself. And honey (especially the real thing) has a mysterious and almost sickening pull – like it could actually drive you mad if you let it get total control of you. Maybe I’m just nuts already…lol…but that’s how I feel about those smells – like they come from somewhere no one is supposed to see, and they could grab hold of you and not let you go.
No need to enter me in the draw. I adore Amaranthine, but have a nice decant, and would love for someone else to have a try!
The earthy, windy, waxy smell of my sons’ heads after they’ve been playing outside is a deep, deep pleasure. I first noticed it on my younger brother as we were growing up, and it seems I only find it on little boys – my daughter’s head never had that smell, and my older son smells less of it as he ages (he’s 11 now). It’a always a reminder of the Now – play now, live now, hug now.
The smell of dry leaves in the autumn is a wonderful reminder of the Past – what’s done is done. Turn it over, let it rest, plant something new in it.
The smell of blooming black locust trees is a harbinger of the Future, and a reminder to plan for encountering joy.
Those babies are blooming profusely here now, and the air smells wonderful.
Beautifully said Mals.
Tough to choose between the smell in the air on a spring morning or clothes line dried in the sun (especially in New Mexico for some reason). But don’t necessarily want to smell either of them ON me!
The smell of bread reconnects me with life. Fresh porcini mushrooms and truffles are also up there.
Perfume-wise, it’s got to be MdO Carnation.
Also my husband wearing Al Oudh is pretty revitalizing >:)
Wow. That’s a tough question.
I think that the reason I like perfume in general is that it brings me back to my body (and out of my busy, whining, overheated, anxious brain). It brings me back to the sensory level of my existence. I am hit particularly hard by several of my perfumes– Week-end a Deauville, Un Coeur en Mai, and Tea for Two come to mind. But also, I just received a bottle of Vintage Cuir de Russie, and it too transported me into my body. This probably sounds like a typo, because we think of perfume as transporting us to another place, and not as grounding us stronger in the moment. But I am so often thinking of other things, other places, other worries that I hardly ever stop and experience the moment that I am currently living in.
So maybe orange blossom is the smell that brings me closest to life? (And also, all of these have a slight edge to them that I don’t like, which somehow makes them even more perfect. They’re not simply pretty; they’re complex and beautiful.)
gator grad, your observation about perfume bringing you back to your body is so perfect! ^:)^ I agree with you on orange blossom, too. I lucked into some L’Artisan 2007 orange blossom and smelling that glorious scent always makes me happy!
The first whiff of warm, wet, dirt in the spring + my husband’s sweat (together, they’re the smell of holes being dug for me- does it get any better?) Bottle that, and I’d love it.
Failing that, I would like to smell the Amaranthine…
Dirt and freshwater.
Moist, humusy dirt, the kind that earthworms love to crawl in, which yes, supports the entire life cycle.
Freshwater, which you usually can’t smell exactly, but which you identify by the way it changes the other smells as you approach. Focuses everything through a prism…including the other smell I’ll throw in, a temperate forest, that mixes conifers and deciduous trees with brambly and other greenery beneath.
There are many smells that make me feel alive, which make me feel connected to life, which can make me tear up over life, but those are the ones that hit to my core when it comes to life itself.
I live in the city now but grew up in farm country. This past weekend I drove up to my hometown and chose to drive through an area with a large Amish community. The weather was beautiful and scents blowing into the open car windows were so vivid and renewing. Freshly plowed earth, large stands of blooming lilacs, cut grass, horses and cows with their babies supplying lots of eau de manure (not a bad smell if you grew up in farm country). It had rained the previous night, so it all had that wet undercurrent. Amazing life affirming scents- combining, swirling and separating again. Best yet, I get to make the drive again this weekend!
Hi Patty! Sorry comments aren’t working for you. Hope someone can figure out how to fix it!
Funny that though I’m crazy about perfume, I don’t necessarily associate “being alive” with scents. I’m sitting here, trying to think of scents that capture that essence, and can’t think of a darned thing! Perhaps because it’s too early in the morning. Maybe coffee???? Ha!!!
Karin – I thought the same thing this a.m., but it is now after lunch and while I can think of many wonderful scents that I love, I still can’t really think of anything that I would label as “being alive”. But I’m enjoying reading everyone else’s comments.