Smelly trees

I came out of the train station yesterday, and was unlocking my bike when I caught the scent of burning paper. At least that was what my nose thought. It was a pleasant smell, but sometimes smells come through wrong. You can be smelling something and thinking to yourself, "that's candyfloss" but there is something about it doesn't sit right. It feels a little skewed, makes you a little dizzy. It's a bit like looking at one of those optical illusions where you have to focus past the plane of the image to see the 3 dimensional picture and your eyes feel like they straining to see something that you can't quite resolve. Suffice to say it wasn't burnt paper. It wasn't until the next morning I realised what the smell was. I was riding past a stand of tall eucalyptus. The morning air is usually fresh and relatively still, and it was full of the scent of these gum trees. But this isn't the astringent, nasal smell I would have associated with eucalyptus oil. In no way did this reminded me of blocked noses and steam baths. This was rich, warm and spicey. It had a food like quality, as though it were more like the smell of something you would drink warm from a flask. I've recently begun riding to the train station. The heat has moved out of the morning air and riding somewhere doesn't seem like such a chore. The mere thought of it earlier in the summer could bring on a sticky vaneer of sweat. The suburbs around me are very green, with a large number of cycle routes linking paths and cul-de-sacs. Riding through the pockets of scent emphasizes the effect of smells on mood. I'm not an advocate of aroma therapy. The whole "smell to get well" movement seems to me to be another example of smartly marketed placebo. However, come Monday, there is no denying the marked difference in my disposition after riding the bus, with it's associate cocktail of perfumes and colognes, compared with riding my bike and the warm aromatics of the gums.