Elizabeth Taylor, when asked during an interview what her favorite smells were, replied “babies, bacon frying, and coffee brewing”—all answers I can relate to and that make sense coming from a passionate, sensuous woman who loved children and eating. I would add another—the smell of freshly cut grass. Of all the scents in the world, that is the one that most personifies “Earth” to me. It's the smell I would most miss were I sent to live on another planet. Every so often while driving home from work with the window beside me down, I’ll go by a median strip where the grass was just cut, and that uniquely fresh, sweet, green, alive smell hits me and triggers memories of sitting in the bleachers watching my brother play baseball, picnics on an old blanket, walking through fields, and what felt like endless days spent outside playing when I was small.

April 22 is Earth Day, and so I’ve decided to devote this post to my planetary home. How to begin? It’s hard to step back so as to gain some perspective on something that has been so tightly interwoven into my experience of life—kind of like deciding to write something on what breathing has meant to me over the years. Of course, if my ability to breathe were ever compromised, it would be much easier to approach the topic. And actually, because of all we read and hear about how we have impacted on this planet, there is a bit of a gap that allows me to view the subject of “Earth” with a bit more objectivity.

I grew up in a setting that had only recently been reclaimed from wilderness. My parents bought a wooded lot and had many of the trees cleared to make room for the house they had built. My oldest brother still has, I’m sure, his collection of arrowheads and other artifacts he dug up from our backyard. We were at the top of a hill on a dead end street that had a forest at the bottom of it—dense swaths of tall trees with a stream flowing through that led to the Gunpowder River. There was a pond nearby and farms adjacent to the newly created communities. Long before computers and video games and even the vast array of programming television now offers, the place to be—the place that offered the most entertainment—was “outside.” In fact, punishment for such infractions as failing to eat some hated vegetable (and I’m afraid many fell into that category for me, as they all seemed to be a sickly gray-green color) was to be told you could not “go outside”—a grim fate indeed, as that was where all of the other kids in the neighborhood would be, after they finished their own dinners.

What “outside” had to offer depended on the season. Spring brought frog eggs, some of which would be collected in a bucket and placed on our back porch so we could watch them hatch into tadpoles, which turned into “spring peepers.” The woods and fields came alive with insects and blossoms and brambles and a wild explosion of life renewing itself. The ground that had been hard and barren during the winter softened, and paths were muddy with the rain. Was it spring when those caterpillar tents sometimes appeared in the tree branches? Summer brought bushes filled with blackberries and raspberries and honeysuckle, and trees lushly green with branches that would bend with the breezes, making shadows on the lawn. The heat was a great excuse to turn the sprinkler on to cool off, and feel the grass underfoot. Or we might all go to the field behind some neighbor’s house to play softball. Sometimes a girlfriend and I would pitch a “tent” by throwing a big bedspread over a clothesline, anchoring it with bricks or rocks, and spend the night telling spooky stories and trying to find the constellations in the dark sky. Fall brought a quickening energy—there was the raking of all of the leaves, and the exciting spectacle of the bonfire afterwards, with glowing faces all around it. There was also a sense of preparations being made for the coming winter—wood to be cut, storm windows to be put in, winter clothes to be brought down from storage. And finally, winter brought its own magic—the anticipation of a snowstorm, the muffled softening of all of the angles by the snow, making the familiar landscape alien, the fascination of icicles forming right before our eyes, the sight of water gurgling beneath the ice on top of the stream. Somehow word would get out that we were all going skating on the pond, or sled riding, or igloo building. The smell of smoke was in the air from houses where neighbors had fires going in their fireplaces, and sounds had a different quality in the cold air.

When my sons were born, I remember one of the joys I anticipated was introducing them to nature—to all that I had experienced when I was young. I wanted them to know that they were part of it all—the big, mysterious, network of interconnectedness that is life. I wanted them to feel the sense of wonder at it that I’ve always had, from the tiniest ants in the garden to the mountains that have been here before us and will be here after we’re gone. And I wanted to pass on to them my feeling of always finding comfort in nature, in that it bestows its gifts freely on all of us, and really asks nothing in return.

I’ll add one more smell to the list that Elizabeth Taylor came up with and that I’ve added to. Cherry blossoms. The house where my children grew up had an old, gnarled cherry tree in front that would bloom in the beginning of April with the most delicate, pale pink blossoms that gave off an ethereal fragrance that will forever remind me of when I brought my youngest son home from the hospital after he was born. It’s a smell that makes me think of heaven.....on Earth.