Beautiful Day

Beautiful day, yesterday. Warm night. Dress, put on shoes, grab jacket, cell phone, I-pod and head out for my morning walk. Clouds to the northwest look ominous, dark and slung low, but it’s still warm. I can smell rain, but I have time. The breeze is moist, but I have time.

The rain hit at the top of the hill as I touched the chain-link fence that surrounds the Air-force base. I’m sans umbrella, but the rain starts slow and smells clean. As I pass a patch of fresh mowed weeds the smell reminds me of the inside of a barn, all yeasty oat and straw, with manure and horse thrown in. I love that smell. It takes me back to the horse-crazy days of a younger me.

Still, every year I haunt the local county fair and the stables awash in that smell. Nothing better than to be able to stroke between the long ears of a mule, the velvet of a Tennessee Walker or the tall shoulders of a Clydesdale. That way the scent lingers on me for hours, which cause me to smile even as we leave the grounds.

Back in the early days of the seventies and another recession we gave up our horses. There was a baby on the way. But that smell takes me back, always, as now. I quicken my pace, hoping to get back home before I’m complete drenched.

The birds don’t care much about the rain. I hear quail in the brush and Mourning Doves taking off for the treetops. Somewhere, a peacock asks for help and the crackle of a pheasant floats up from the wooded grove below. I could curse the rain and how wet I’m getting but I don’t. I thank the memories that simple, earthy scent gives me.

Could just one paragraph of my writing do the same for someone? Could a smell, a sight, a memory turn into the best writing I do for the week? Make it so.