One thing about interior Alaska I've never seen mentioned

[Genessa]

There's something I noticed about interior Alaska, but I don't recall ever seeing mentioned before.

 

When we stepped out of Fairbanks airport, I immediately noticed something. Or didn't notice something. Very little aromas, smells, odors. This has never happened to me before. Every other location I've ever travelled to had aromas, whether the florally, steamy smell of South Carolina, the fresh, piney smell of New Hampshire, the piney, salty smell of Maine, the tropical salty, florally smell of the Caribbean, the clean, green of Colorado, etc. I love driving around with the windows down enjoying the "country" smells.

 

At first I thought it was me, I had gotten stuffed up on the planes and didn't realize it, so I said nothing to my dh or my friends.

Strolling around the grounds of Fairbanks Princess Riverside Lodge, along side the river, through the gardens, that evening and the following morning, it was still bothering me, this lack of scents. I asked my husband and he thought about it and tried "smelling" and then agreed with me.

 

I took to stooping at every piece of vegetation and sniffing to see if I could pick up any smells. When held directly at your nose, there was a "green" scent, sort of like any eastern US city park after a sun shower, but muted.

 

You would occasionally pick up an odor of fuel, cooking food, etc., but very little scent from the growing things. I asked some of the people we met about it, and the ones who lived in Alaska their entire lives had no idea what I was even talking about, but one transplanted Alaskan said he thought it was because of the permafrost.

 

I never considered myself "that" odor conscious, but of the six of us, I was the only one who spent more than two minutes thought about this and I realized that I enjoy the different smells of places. In Alaska, it wasn't really until we hit Anchorage - which had a muted salt water creek at low tide (when the mud is half dry, half wet and the shelled critters are out strolling smell) - that I found a smell without sticking my nose right into plant life.

 

I loved Alaska and will like to go back one day (I will go back one day) - this didn't harm my enjoyment, just gave me one more thing to think about.

[Yukon]

It is funny, isn't it. But it's just a result of the extreme dryness here - I forget the exact scientific explanation, but basically if a plant alows smells to escape, it's also allowing moisture to escape. After a rain, the smells are more like everywhere else, but the plants are still conditioned to keep "tight".

[Genessa]

thanks for the explanation, Yukon.

 

That actually makes sense. And since it was my first real experience with a dry area (other than Vegas, and with the heat, I couldn't notice anything else) it really struck me.