Freedom Has a Smell

CEFR Level B2-C1

I walk through the rainforest, well not a true rainforest, but with an abundance of wet leaves brushing my bare arms and humidity so strong my skin is wet, it feels like it should be. I walk and try to avoid poison ivy hiding among foliage with names I have yet to learn. ​

The trail, a mixture of red clay and centuries of forest decay, steams with the scent I’ve only found in deciduous woodlands. This is the smell of risk, adventure, power, and freedom. 

Risk and Adventure

I grew up hiking in the woods of North Carolina. Playtime was spent sliding down gulleys behind our house, forming trails in the thick layer of composting leaves and willfully ignoring the threat of snakes. 

The snakes probably all hurried away as we ran towards the rim of the slope, but while I’ve never been afraid of snakes, strictly speaking, I have always preferred not to meet them in the wild. As a child, I worried that a snake couldn’t crawl away faster than I was sliding on a patch of leaves. I was more than a little scared that a snake would get caught up in the pile that gathered under my knees as I moved down the slope. The thought of a snake crawling up inside my shorts leg terrified me. Of course, it never happened, but the perceived risk was just exciting enough to be enticing. 

Sliding down gulleys might seem dangerous. I won’t theorize on why our parents let us. What I will say is that we were intelligent enough to try to avoid routes with roots, paid attention to what was at the bottom of the gully and only went sliding if we would land in leaves, and kept a look out for snakes hiding in the leaf litter. This was adventure. ​

Power Found

Fast forward many years and I left home, attending college in another state. College and grad school didn’t bring many hikes, nor much contact with nature. I didn’t  think I missed it. Hiking belonged to the hobbies my parents designated a family activity and playing, in the woods or elsewhere, was no longer part of my life.

Then came the day that I bravely went to Congaree Swamp alone, anxious that they would tell me I wasn’t allowed. I was a woman alone and at 22 years old, people often thought I was 15. To be forbidden to enter would have been mortifying. To be instructed on safe hiking and questioned on my route and abilities would have been infuriating. 

My fears were groundless. The park attendants welcomed me, gave me a trail map, and wished me happy hiking. 

I walked into that sundrenched wilderness and breathed the smell of last year’s sun-warmed leaves slowly decomposing on the ground. This was freedom. This is what my soul had missed, without knowing it, for the past five years. I walked farther, entering the shade of old-growth forest. The swamp smelled of muck, but this was the smell of home. Not the muck, but the feeling of adventure and belonging that came with the smell. It was here that I felt more confident than I had in years, knowing that I could enter a new trail and have the skills to overcome any number of challenges. This was power.

Power Lost

Three years later, I walked another trail. This one was in the mountains of Montana. It had rained earlier and the leaves steamed while my leather boots chewed holes into the backs of my ankles and my ill-fitting Carharts chafed. I was miserable. Safety procedures that insist you squat for 30 minutes after the last sound of thunder may be needed in a group, but the boredom they entail added to my misery. Also, hiking in a group that doesn’t alter its pace based on the terrain is not fun. I couldn’t say anything, though, because I had signed up for this job. I was not going to be known as the complainer. It was a strange feeling, wishing to be someplace else and yet my instincts insisting that this wet woodland was the place of supreme happiness. ​

Freedom and Power Regained

Fifteen years after surviving the Montana Conservation Corps, I found myself in the steaming pseudo-rainforest I first mentioned. This time, I was alone. I slipped through mud and took wrong turns and chased dragonflies and smelled sun and wet and happiness and freedom and felt no anxiety over fully using my skills. I was filled with a sense of my own power to survive whatever this adventure brought me.

Most people wax poetic about the open vistas of the Southwest. Those have their beauty, but my heart will always belong to damp trails surrounded by trees that obscure the horizon. In this enclosed, green, dripping space, I breathe the scent of freedom.