Bryn authored the Wednesday Wonder last week, and it was a lovely one on summer. I worked with this starting point:

Make a list of the things that you personally love to reminisce about from your own summertime memories.

Scents often trigger my summer memories. Some of the triggers are:

Smell of swamp. Weird, I know, but Grandma and Grandpa P had a house near a lake and they were reclaiming some land from the swamp. (Perfectly fitting, as Grandpa was from the Netherlands, that feisty little country.) So when I smell swamp, I think of all the fun times we, the eight cousins, had visiting our grandparents and Aunt N. Our boy cousins, Dave and Charlie, spent more time there, so they would show us all the neat things they had found. It was the place of swimming and fishing (not in the swamp in the lake) and exploring and growing up. It's gone now, but the memories live on.

The tang of pine. There's a certain twist of pine that I catch every now and then and immediately I'm back at church camp on Lake Michigan. The path to the prayer chapel was sweetly pine-laden. (And we had a great time moving all our counselor's belongings ... bed, vanity, and all, there one day.) The camp is still there, but the old dorms, the old prayer chapel...all gone. (Sheesh, I can be such a whiner.)

A humid, slightly fishy smell. Ah. Lake Michigan. The A Destination if you live in Michigan. (Okay otto, I'm waiting for you to get back from California and refute this.) If the fishy smell was TOO strong it meant the alewives were playing hob with the beach. Then we headed inland.

Clean, strong, dry scent of Montana. The smell that has always struck my nostrils as I hop off the train at East Glacier. The smell of home. Yeah, I have a one-track mind!

Great wonder, bryn!