Awhile back, I told my friend Danny Sadder (no relation to Daniel Sadler) that on some days I love the smell of the swamp. When the water level drops, the rotting vegetation is revealed, and the stench is rich and wild and alien and beautiful. Although it has aspects in common with a backed up toilet, the effect is decidedly different. Swamp smell, here in the middle of Georgia in late summer, is like the smell of ...danger.
Today on my way home, though, it smelled more like cookies.
Specifically, the swamp smelled like some kind of freakish gourmet ginger snap cookie just coming out of the oven. Allspice, fresh cardamum pods, and slightly fermented orange zest. The effect was particularly stunning because the air conditioning does not work in my little Honda del Sol, so as I rounded the curve of I-475 a few miles from rejoining I-75, the swamp cookies smell came at me through the window in a blast of hot air, quite like I had just opened the oven and leaned in to see if they were ready.
I'm not saying you should ever -ever- eat the cookies, mind you. Back away from the cookies.
But some days, the swamp smells really cool.
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5 comments:
How could I possibly resist the cookies after an intro like that?!
bekbek: check your nose. you might find a chunk of cookie up there somewhere. like maybe a gingersnap or something.
omg, so you heard about that day back when I had dredlocks, and I went to a party, and the hostess found a chunk of ginger soap stuck in my hair?
Man, I will never live that down...
soap is much better than cat poop.
my daughter was eating breakfast and kept smelling something nasty. she finally spotted a glob of wet cat poop in her hair.
i just had to share that. :D
i need to know what a swamp really smells like!!! soon!!!
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