Olfactory Impressions

[Hillwalker]

During this friday's bushwhack in the Captain locale, We encountered something that has fascinated me for years. The smell of civilization. After about ten hours in the woods we discovered that we could smell the old Desolation Shelter site about ten minutes before we reached it. We also smelled the creosote of a bridge long before we walked up on it. Way back I remember smelling the rusty metal of an old logging camp located quite a ways off the trail near the old Plane Crash Plaque on the Old Thoreau Falls trail bypass. I also have been able to smell the soapy smell of other hikers long before meeting them. It makes you wonder just what we are missing due to the deadening of our senses by deoderants, coatings, paints, etc. Here is a question to "thru hikers": How did your sense of smell change during prolonged periods of abstinance from artificial air flavorings?

 

[Artex]

Wow, you have a keen sense of smell! I don't know if you'd enjoy hiking with me. Those that know me really well call me "Fartex".

 

[ward]

I know that on a recent trip to the sewards i kept smelling spagetti and meat balls. Maybe i was just hungry ? Dont know

 

[post'r boy]

someone told me it has to do with high and/or low pressure in the atmosphere!

 

[carole]

I can often tell there are hikers ahead of me by their scent - bug spray, perfume, or tobacco.

 

[SAR-EMT40]

Absolutely. In the military we had what was called sound, light and odor discipline. Deodorants, farts, soaps, cigarette smoke, etc can be smelled over very long distances. Most of the time we are so used to smelling odors that most people don't realize they are smelling it. In the woods especially at night they can help you cue in to your environment. Low atmospheric pressure helps keep smells close to the ground.

Keith

 

[MadRiver]

After serving in the Navy for four years, it took about two years before I could smell salt water again. Being on the ocean for all those years immuned me to the smell of salt.

p.s. there was always a running joke that we could smell Naples twenty miles out to sea. Seriously!

 

[MrAmeche]

Wow, that's amazing. I had assumed my olfactory nerves were pretty much gone after years of smoking, so I don't really give it much thought while I'm hiking.

Though occasionally I think I smell food in the woods, but as ward stated earlier, it's usually because I'm constantly thinking about it.

 

[chuck]

I have had that same scent experiences in the woods, being able to smell a rusted out bucket or plastic from a distance. Scent is a strange thing sometimes I smell a certain type of food, soap or something like moth balls and immediately get this clear vision of something that happened in the past like I was there again (much clearer than Deja Vieu). The best description I have found of it is in Prousts, "Rememberance of Things Past".

 

[the starchild]

i haven't had the luck or time to do any serious through hiking, but some of my friends have. we have talked about how they were able to smell people with deodorant/perfume from a long ways away. I would bet the longer out on the trail or in the backcountrym the more aware and perceptive one would be to both unnatural and natural odors.