Emotional hiking journal: What hidden smell on this trail makes your chest tighten or expand?
The Scent of Honeysuckle: How a Summer Smell Carries My Childhood
There are certain scents that time refuses to let fade. For me, honeysuckle is one of them. One inhale, and I’m no longer standing where I am. Now, I’m transported back to warm West Virginia afternoons when the air was heavy with sweetness, and life was simple enough to fit inside a summer day.
and the Pools That Raised Me
Every time I catch that scent, I’m back at the Oglebay Park pool, chlorine in the air and sunlight bouncing off the water. I can almost hear the echo of kids laughing, the splash of cannonballs, and my mom calling from the side to remind me to reapply sunscreen.
Then I’m at Grand Vue Park in Moundsville. In yet another summer memory stitched together with the same smell. My hair slicked back with pool water, my skin sticky from popsicles, and my heart full of the kind of joy only childhood knows. Those pools weren’t just places to swim; they were where my mom and I found our rhythm. She’d sit in the shade, content just watching, while honeysuckle crept along the fence line and filled the air with something that even then felt sacred.
The Ballfield and the Blizzard
Sometimes that same scent meets me at a softball field in my mind. The crack of the bat, the dirt on my cleats, the sting in my arms from connecting just right. I can still feel the weightless moment after hitting a grand slam. There’s my mom’s cheer cutting through the noise, louder than the crowd itself.
After the game, we’d stop for a cookie dough Blizzard at Dairy Queen with the whole team. I’d be sweaty, dirt-streaked, and proud. She would smile like the world was ours for that one small window of time. That’s what honeysuckle smells like to me… victory, summer, and love.
The Scent of My Mother’s Hands
Fresh-cut grass does it too. My mom always took care of everything: mowing the yard, planting flowers, washing the car by hand. She smelled like grass, soil, soap, and sometimes honeysuckle all at once. It was the scent of someone who built comfort out of effort, who held entire summers together with her bare hands.
Even now, when that smell drifts through a window or lingers on a trail, I pause. I breathe it in like a prayer. Because somewhere in that sweetness, in that green freshness of grass and bloom, she still exists. Not gone… just layered into the air.
Why Smell Is the Strongest Memory
Science backs it, sure… the olfactory bulb is tied to emotion and memory. But for me, it’s simpler. Honeysuckle is a time machine. A gentle reminder that some parts of us never grow up, never move on, never stop reaching for the hand that kept us steady.
It’s more than nostalgia… it’s grounding. It’s a way of saying, I remember. I’m still here. And so is she.
What smell does this for you on a trail? In a bakery? Anywhere?
