If I move – things I’d miss: The air

The summer air at the Bar B is incredible.

There’s a scent in the air that only manifests when the winter snows are gone and the sun warms the earth. It’s a scent reminiscent of how dog’s paws smell. Mixed in with pine needles, red earth, popcorn and clean cotton socks.

Whatever the combination, it smells like childhood and history. Take a whiff and it transports you back to a childhood from the 1950s, a vacation away from the city into the mountains of Colorado. Streams flow by, aspen leaves rustle in the breeze. Mom bakes bread in the early morning hours and there’s taffy pulls in the evening.

You play cards in the mid-day heat and fish in the late afternoon, returning proudly with the evening’s dinner. You pick wildflowers on your way home and don’t need to wear shoes. Squirrels scuttle from tree to tree and white clouds roll by gathering for an early evening storm that cools the day’s heat.

Faint music on a tinny radio plays from the the neighbor’s house next door, only a few hundred feet through the Ponderosa pines. Curtains float in the summer breeze. The distant sound of children laughing carries across the valley.

When I smell the air in the Colorado mountains, that’s where I go.