Sensory Gratitude

Sensory Gratitude: Daily Rituals

Each night, after I lay my head on the pillow, I play a gratitude game. I think back to the best sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch of the day. For sight, it might be the flashy red feathers of a cardinal or the olive-green eyes of a butterfly. Most often it’s a plant: today it was the verdant foliage of mesquite against the deep blue sky. For smell, it could be the familiar notes from lantana leaves, or, if I’m lucky, the fragrance from datura flowers. Sometimes it is the welcoming scent of Matt’s skin. The sound, most often, is birdsong but sometimes is human laughter or a happy dog howl. The taste memory might be the refreshing tang of a wild wolfberry or the exquisite pleasure of a dark chocolate caramel. As to touch, I love the feel of different woods, so it might be the heft of a cottonwood branch I carried. If I volunteered at the shelter that day, it could be the softness of a dog’s ear or the weight of their body as they relaxed into my arms. The sensory memories lull me to sleep.

In Spring, it’s a breeze: there are so many sensory delights. Winter, too, has its pleasures, as do the rainy periods, whenever they occur. In July, though? It is challenging to remain grateful when it is extremely hot and dry (118oF!) but oh-so-essential to stay hopeful and calm when what I really want to do is scream at the top of my lungs: This is an international emergency! We need to unite and find ways to stop the planet from heating and catching fire and flooding! It is astounding to me that society carries on as usual when a basic parameter for life on Earth- temperature- is changing so quickly out of our tolerance limits.

*Big deep breath.* And another. At times, calming rituals make my spirit soar high to the skies with peace and joy, as described in this piece excerpted from Bringing Home the Wild: A Riparian Garden in a Southwest City. At other times, they keep me sane and grounded: they keep the anxiety at bay. 

I would love to hear about the sensory delights from your wild places or gardens, and gratitude rituals you may have. Drop me a line!

Mountain Laurel: Staying in Sniff-shape

CrinkleCrinkleCrinkle. What the heck? I jumped out of bed, nine years back, to the sound of paper ripping. Amusingly enough, I found our curious new pup having a micro-adventure. Chip had come to us from the streets of Phoenix, with a gash on his lovely brown head. I worked like the dickens to keep him socialized and open to the new. It worked. Now, the mischievous boy had removed from a shelf a book auspiciously titled Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know and was noisily proceeding to eat it. Parts of the book were now, literally, inside of a very specific dog. Reading the uneaten parts of the book was a fun adventure for me, providing the opportunity to explore the world from the viewpoint of another species. I love to play that game.

I do, sometimes, put nose to the wind, to determine if I can tell what is engaging our pack of four. Sometimes, I can; more often, not. Sense of smell decreases with age, and I now find myself test-sniffing the strong scents, and the weak, to make sure I’ve still ‘got it’, ‘it’ being the capacity to engage with my environment though my nose. Females on average have greater olfactory sensitivity than males, detecting scents at lower concentrations, and have greater capacity to discriminate and name them, once sensed. But, alas, mine is fading. To slow the descent, I exercise my sense of smell frequently. Use it or lose it, as they say.

Thankfully, even within the confines of our garden, there are many opportunities to keep in sniff-shape. In February, the bright scents of orange blossoms (Citrus sinensis) elevate our serotonins and our mood. In April, the bees and I swoon, if I dare use that word, to the earthy aroma of catclaw acacia (Senegalia greggii). On May mornings, like the honeybees who bask in the narcotic nectar of her trumpet-shaped flowers, I lose myself in the soul-enchanting smells of sacred datura (Datura wrightii).

I skipped over March in that sequence, which is a good time of the year to skip with delight. This is when the glorious blossoms of Texas mountain laurel (Dermatophyllum secundiflorum) appear. These riparian denizens of the Chihuahuan ecoregion have been planted in many an urban landscape, including our own. Almost better than the purple color of her flowers is her smell. Grape candy, grape Kool-Aid… the odor is intense and magnificent. She attracts carpenter bees, migrating flutters of painted ladies, and us. Sometimes I can be found atop my stepladder, enjoying a front row seat to the show.

Ah, the smells of spring. Plants are spectacular chemists, producing compounds like limonene and linalool, and verbenene and sabinol. Those would be good names for our next group of dogs! Whether produced in leaf glands or along nectar trails, whether repelling insects or attracting them, we receive ancillary benefit. Fancifully enough, these chemicals have no odor, per se. Through trial and error, over the millennia, our brains and sensory apparatus developed the ability to discriminate among chemical compounds and attach a scent-memory to each in our neural network. Qualia. Experiencing properties as distinct from their physical source; a tipping point between physical and metaphysical. Almost enough to tip me off my ladder.