Why Do We Remember Smells, Not Pictures?

I can forget the face of someone I worked with for months. But I will never forget the smell of wet earth after the first spring rain.

Our brain is strange. Images are stored in the cortex ─ where everything is neatly organized, but sometimes gets lost. Smells, however, go straight to the limbic system ─ where emotions, instincts, and the oldest memories live. So one breath, and you’re no longer here. You’re a child again, in another city, in a life that seemed to have ended forever.

Spring doesn’t smell like flowers, as people often think. First, it smells like earth.

When the snow has just melted and the black, wet, winter-weary soil is exposed ─ this smell is unlike anything else. There’s dampness, decay, some ancient power in it. It smells like a beginning.

And then, in May, the lilacs bloom.

When I was a child, I spent a lot of time at my grandmother’s country house. Next to the house grew a lilac bush. And during its flowering, we had a ritual: in the morning after waking up and in the evening before sleep, we would go to the bush and smell the lilacs. It was our small daily ritual. In the morning ─ to fully wake up. In the evening ─ to stop the flow of thoughts and calm the nervous system before sleep. But now, if I close my eyes and remember that bush ─ I can clearly smell it.

Image created by the author using AI

My grandmother is long gone. The house was sold long ago, I don’t even know its current owners. But I like to believe they kept that lilac bush. And that someone now wakes up in the morning, steps out onto the porch, and breathes in the same scent I remember from thirty years ago.

I close my eyes ─ and I’m there again. In my childhood. At the country house. Next to my grandmother.

That’s how smells work.

Closer to summer, the scent of freshly cut grass takes over. It’s a sign that summer has arrived. In the residential complex where we live now, the grass is mowed every week. And every time, I throw the window wide open to catch the first notes of that aroma. Even though the noise of the lawnmower outside can easily trigger a headache. The smell of grass tells me we’re roughly at the midpoint of the year.

Autumn smells different. And I love it for that.

The smell of decaying leaves ─ the most recognizable autumn aroma. The smell of October. It’s already cool, the last cobwebs tremble in the wind. In a few days, the velvety autumn warmth will give way to prolonged rains. But for now, you can listen to the rustle of fallen leaves and breathe in their scent. This scent is a bit like the smell of a beloved sleeping cat ─ more precisely, its belly.

After the move, I spent a long time searching for familiar smells.

The pine forest here smells different. If you’ve been in a pine forest in the July heat somewhere in Eastern Europe, you know that thick, resinous, sun-warmed aroma. Here, the pine smells more restrained. There’s more moisture in it, less sun, more silence. I’m learning to feel this new smell, but sometimes I still miss the southern one.

I searched for the smell of the sea. In my hometown, it was a background ─ always, every day. But I remember when I first felt it here: I was studying at language courses, and one day we went out for lunch by the coast. Hundreds of kilometers away, but the sea smells the same everywhere.

Now the sea is an hour and a half from my home: train, bus, another bus. So now the smell of the sea is the smell of a holiday. A day off. A trip.

And I also found lilacs. Several bushes not far from my house. They haven’t bloomed yet, but I’m already waiting. I know that this smell will be a bridge. It will smell the same as the bush by my grandmother’s porch. Like May in my childhood. And when they bloom, I’ll go and stand there, eyes closed, and let myself be there and here at the same time. In Scandinavia and at that country house. Now and thirty years ago.

In the city, we’ve lost many smells. Exhaust fumes, air fresheners, household chemicals, all kinds of perfumes, the smell of fast food, coffee ─ all of it drowns out what’s left of nature. Sometimes I catch myself thinking: do people who grew up in the heart of a metropolis know what earth smells like after rain? Do they feel the difference between spring and autumn air? Between pine forest in July heat and pine forest in a Scandinavian forest?

Or do they simply not know that this difference can be felt?

In the second essay of this series, I wrote that people don’t notice spring. Maybe they just don’t feel it. In the literal sense. They don’t breathe it in, don’t remember it, don’t connect it to what came before.

I’m learning differently.

I close my eyes when it smells like earth. I stop by a tree after the rain. I breathe in the freshly cut grass and let myself return to that summer twenty years ago.

I search for familiar smells in a new country and rejoice when I find them. Even if they sound quieter than in my memory. Even if the lilacs grow in a different place, and the sea is an hour and a half away.

Smells are a gate to the past. And they’re also a bridge to the present.

I don’t want to close either one.