Making Scents

Maple bacon syrup.  The last of the wild strawberries ripening on the vines.  A campfire with hickory wood smoke that smells just like roasting steaks.

Ah, the intoxicating scents of September here in the Pacific Northwest.

Autumn is right around the corner, and with it comes the turning of the weather to cooler temperatures and the changing of the leaves from green to gold like the changing of the national Color Guard.

The beauty of the Fall season here and so many other places is something that has always amazed me.  But it’s the all familiar and comforting smells of autumn that makes me want to drag out the quilt from its summer cupboard and snuggle under it by the low blaze of the fireplace with a good book and cup of maple and pecan flavored coffee from Starbucks (a hot guy beside me wouldn’t be bad either—LOL).

As a writer, I’m often frustrated with trying to accurately describe a certain feeling or sensation or taste so that my reader can better join me in my imaginary world.  But that other important olfactory sense is the most difficult to translate onto paper.  I’ve often sat at my laptop, breathing in a vanilla scented candle and tried to describe its wondrous, sweet, rich, delicious smell, usually coming with the ever-brilliant “well, it smells like vanilla.”

Pumpkin pie with cinnamon.

Chocolate-caramel cupcakes.

Melted caramel dipped Granny Smith apples.

Candy corn.  How in the heck do you describe smelling and eating candy corn, the staple of all Halloween events?

Oh well, it will always be my problem to hash out as I write in the future.  I love keeping scented candles by my computer as I do, inspiring me with their aromas, if not actually helping me translating that sense to you.  It might help to run over to Yankee Candle and buy a few flavors yourself to set your own warm, snuggly Fall mood as well.

And then have a slice of warm, chewy, chocolatey Tollhouse pie on me.

(recipe in the Wolf’s Den)