While I try to ignore the stench dominating the news from our nation’s capital, I’ve decided to focus on some of the more positive scents that dominate in the rest of our world.
Here’s a story about “scents” I came across in the winter issue of National Parks, a magazine devoted to protecting America’s national parks and public lands.
Author Maggie Downs likes to hike through our now-sadly-endangered national parks, beginning her story with a hike through Arches National Park, where “the air is alive” with scents like the crisp aroma of pines and junipers. She notes that these scents are different from those in Joshua Tree National Park, where desert aromas permeate the air.
Downs goes on to describe the scents that connect her to each destination she explores, highlighting the significance of scents. Flowers, for example, rely on fragrance to lure pollinators, while predators like wolves use scent to mark territories, find mates, and track prey.
But Downs worries that many national park “scentscapes” are under threat because of climate change and pollution. Although we have long treasured our parks for their beauty and their quiet, their “vital aromas” haven’t gotten the same level of protection.
Will Rice, a professor at the University of Montana, has studied how natural smells are increasingly relevant to tourists in our national parks. These natural smells “play a key role in what grounds us to a place,” he says. “Scent…plays a role” in visitors’ strong attachment to the parks,” he adds. “National parks are places where you can smell natural smells, and that’s increasingly difficult [to find] in a developing and industrial world.”
Maggie Downs adds, “Unfortunately, climate change is already affecting scentscapes…. It threatens native plant species with drought and wildfires, and it disrupts blooming scents, which throws plants and pollinators out of sync.” She notes that “flowering plants are losing their fragrance,” and air pollution can mask natural scents.
We can’t be sure about the future impact of climate change and pollution, but we should try to protect nature’s smells while we still can. Will Rice suggests that legislation can help. The Marine Mammal Protection Act helped seals make a comeback in Cape Cod. Their return has restored their scent along the beach, a scent Thoreau smelled when he walked up the Cape Cod coast. And while that smell disappeared for a long time, it has now happily rebounded.
So let’s be scent-sible and protect the natural scents that still surround us. As I often say (with no originality whatsoever), “Better late than never.”
susanjustwrites
Susan Just Writes 