When a Smell Takes You Back

Sometimes, you catch a whiff of something, and you are instantly transported to a different time in your life.

I was walking to my softball game, which is located in Fairmount Park. Though the fields are in an open area, you have to hug the woods to get there from the bus.

(I don’t mean literally hug the woods, though I have a friend who fiercely advocates hugging trees.)

But as I walked to the game on that humid Philly summer day, I smelled something that I hadn’t in a long time.

It was the smell of the past. It was the overwhelming sense that I was back running cross country on Belmont Plateau and running through the woods on a trail that included a hill so fearsome and steep that it was called “Parachute Hill.”

I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised. The woods where I ran cross country are part of the same city park where I was presently located, even if there is a river separating the two areas. But I had never had that overwhelming sense of being transported in time before, back almost thirty years ago.

Back when I didn’t know what college I would go to, heck what high school I would go to! Back to a time where I would dread every Sunday as I lined up on the line with a bunch of other girls from all across the Philadelphia region to run a cross country race.

I can see that girl now. The one with the long hair who would give her parents withering looks as they cheered her on and encouraged her to…