Green Things Growing

Ah, the smell of green things growing! It is not often, in recent months, that I get to a more rural setting. Yesterday, I did so, and with a light rain earlier in the day, and a cooling of the temperature from the heat of the past week, the sweet smell of something blooming came to me with a poignancy I have not felt in a long time.

Smell, they tell me, is one of our most powerful memory inducers. When I catch the aroma of burning grass, it takes me back to long ago – the 1960s – when we used to burn the grass after cutting it and allowing it to dry. Each house had a ‘burn barrel', and sometimes we burned the grass within.

Our house, at the time, backed up on a rather large ‘commons’. I well remember one day after someone had procured an industrial mower, the men of the surrounding houses had gotten together to burn the grass. We all raked it into long rows, and then set fire to them. My brother and I joined the men in this duty, and the smell of burning grass invaded everything. I'll remember that smell forever. I also remember the smell of the woods on a summer night, and the joy of air washed by rain in the summer. Each of those smells takes me back.

Winters lasted a long time at that latitude, and the cold, frozen months passed slowly. With the spring, however, the melting snow and warmer temperatures encouraged the dormant trees and plants to come to life in a frenzy of growth. Standing outside, with snow still in piles, one could nonetheless feel new life in the freshness of the air.

Decades later, in the Arctic, I experienced the same thing. I lived and worked in what was basically a very long double-wide trailer. Snow stuck to the ground near the end of September and didn’t melt until late May. Some patches lasted into July. Working on the Distant Early Warning Line, I learned to glory in the spring, when it came. Most of my time, I spent in the ‘module train’, a 100 metre long affair, which contained sleeping quarters, kitchen, dining room, entertainment facilities, an office, equipment rooms and power plant. Other than what emanated from the kitchen, the place had little to recommend it as far as smells were concerned.

Too many people smoked, and the smell of stale cigarettes permeated a lot of the rooms – quite unpleasant for a non-smoker like myself. Outside, for most of the year, the air was fresh and clean. However at –30 to –50 degrees, with nothing but ice and snow for hundreds of kilometres, the olfactory treasures of the area left much to be desired.

But not in the spring and summer. Those few ‘short’ months saw prodigious growth and glory. And I loved being outside – except for the insects. Clouds of mosquitoes sometimes reduced that pleasure significantly.

And what has this to do with science-fiction? Well, consider a space-ship. It seems much like my module train: an enclosed environment with little but living quarters, eating quarters, some entertainment facilities, equipment rooms and a power plant. And its occupants remain in it for the long months between arrivals at different planets or space stations. Outside: a quite unfriendly environment.

What might one miss in such a facility? Green things growing. In my book “Ghost Fleet”, my cat-like Tlartox introduced odours to the air through their ships, they type depending upon what sort of action – or lack of action – was coming. Grass smells to relax; the hint of blood to inflame the senses and get ready for battle. In “Courtesan”, my ship holds a ‘green room’, where people can sit amid plants – something they don’t see for long periods of time at a stretch. They called it ‘sanctuary’.

Life informs. One needs only examine it, and then use one’s imagination. What would you not like to be exposed to? For me: perfume. Imagine someone wearing too much perfume in an enclosed place, where you can’t get away from it. Thus, in “Courtesan”, one of my characters mentions to another that they – ship folk – don’t approve of perfume. There is no going outside for a breath of fresh air, and though the ship will have forced air circulation and filters, why make life a misery for everyone?

Yesterday, outside, I felt a sudden sense of freedom, of elation, as I breathed in the fresh air with the smell of green things growing. Right now, as I write this in my basement, surrounded by ‘house smells’, I no longer feel that. Though it is four o’clock in the morning, I suddenly feel a need to be outside once again, to regain – even if for only a few seconds – the lift I received earlier.

And with that, I’ll end this so I can take my own advice. Then I'll come back in and return to a space ship – do some writing.