Scent Makes a Place - Nautilus
I n the late spring, the desert smells like chocolate. It’s fleeting, and it isn’t everywhere in New Mexico, but sometimes, walking in the scrubland, it suddenly hits: a sweetness shimmering through the air. At first, I didn’t know how to read this olfactory information, but now I can look for the source: yellow-petaled flowers with dark centers—chocolate daisies—blooming in the sun.
The American Southwest smells unlike anywhere I’ve lived before. It’s better than the woods of Maine; it’s far more fragrant. I didn’t expect that when I moved here. I’m a perfume collector, so I had smelled the desert through art before I smelled it in person. Through my experience sampling “Mojave Ghost,” “Arizona,” and “Desert Eden”—perfumes designed to evoke cactus flowers and conifers—I thought the mesas would smell dusty and musky, with a little green cypress thrown in. I was wrong.
Here, the plants hold their essences close to the stem out of necessity, only letting their oils free when it’s safe to do so, when they’re ready to be fertile. Here, the sand bakes under the sun and the fragile soil releases its secrets with each step. Here, even my dog’s urine is more potent, more fragrant on the wind, a louder yellow than I ever witnessed during our walks in Maine, blending uneasily with the grey rabbitbrush. It’s wetter and stranger than I ever anticipated—complex, elusive, fecund.
