The smell of the morning

Twenty seconds into my walk, with the cold creeping in through the bit of leg my socks weren't covering, I smelled what was going to be my success that day.

It happened today, exactly like this. After watching my week's urgencies finally curve downward, I parked, and as I got out of the car on what was turning into a fresh, windy day, I pulled my arms against my body, hunched my shoulders a little, squinted, and started walking.

I was headed to the bakery two blocks from my house. Fridays at home mean breakfast with every kind of flour and shape you can think of, and after that simple errand, I was going to hole up at home for a good stretch of hours.

The thing is, as I got out, with that morning sun, I caught that smell.

A smell I love: my daughters and I call it the smell of the morning (maybe you do too). Not the eleven o'clock one, the eight o'clock one: a mix of dampness, earth, and sunlit air that only shows up when the day is just starting, and dissolves soon after.

A smell that, in that moment and every time I catch it since, leaves me with the feeling of a beginning, a blank notebook for the day, everything still to happen, a pile of possibilities all at once.

And maybe you're wondering how a smell does all that to me. Let me tell you where I think it comes from.

Going back a few years. As a kid I spent several vacations at my grandparents' farm. The truck was packed with supplies in rough proportion to how many days we'd be spending more than a hundred kilometers from civilization, on top of the drive itself: part paved road, part dirt track with hills (the closest thing to a rollercoaster you can imagine), and then a stretch of trail and gates to open. Out there I found a connection to nature hard to beat since, the clean air, the wide open view, the stillness, endless fun, given they'd hand me a tricycle and just let me be. The whole perimeter of the house had a path, so I'd ride between the house and the pool, stopping at specific spots to take things in: caught up watching the cypress trees moving nonstop, the bucket that by morning had a ring of ice on top of the water, the peeling wall catching the first sun, the sound coming from the kitchen, my grandmother cooking with the door open, calling out to me every time I rode by.

Close your eyes and go.

No doubt all those stored sensations left me with an extra sensitivity for cold, sunny days.

Back to the present, my instant reaction every time I catch that smell is to go back to those farm mornings. It's nothing less than opening the file of freedom with no schedule, no conditions, no danger, the urge to play, the link to exploring and to a different speed, through the senses.

A whole week of stress brought down in seconds by one specific smell.

It happened on a Friday, right as my week started to loosen up. What matters isn't the first part but the second: slowing down enough to let in the details that speed never lets through. A sped up body doesn't register senses. Like eating in two bites and not tasting the food, it doesn't catch smells either. A body that starts to slow down, does.

Here's the key fact: smell is the only one of the five senses that doesn't stop at the thalamus, the toll booth that sight, hearing, and touch all pass through before reaching the areas that handle emotion and memory. Smell goes straight there, no stops, no filters, no obstacles. That's why a scent can shift your body before your head even understands what happened.

The math on this is convenient: through one scent, a good memory leapt over an entire week of built up stress in a matter of seconds.

When I started this post I told you I'd smelled what was going to be my success that day.

That day I sent the forty eight messages for an experiment that had been weighing on me, the kind that with a different mood would've been torture. I cleared out my email inbox, finished a book, and went for a walk. And on top of it, I had room to watch a documentary I'd been meaning to see for years.

J.