I ride the long road of redemption everyday from the sin of the big city to the lowlands of salvation where cypress swamps harbor ancient secrets we may never know and rivers run, like veins, through the thickets of Eastern North Carolina culture.

Today’s journey was no less than typical. The belligerent summer heat, tardy from its usual presence, was replaced with the polite and cordial manners of early fall. The air felt clean, unfettered, and laid on my skin like newly molted down feathers. The air also had a smell. Lots of smells. Like a crockpot of aromas only found east of Wake County.

Because of my comfort laden proclivities, air conditioning is non-negotiable while traveling in my iron steed. However, today’s air, which rode alongside my truck, was curiously inviting, not like a mermaid along the seashore of despair type of inviting, but more like a well stocked ice cream truck on a mid-July day. I graciously accepted the invitation and conjoined myself through the half opened driver’s side window. At a speed my better judgement has advised me not to disclose, the smells of the flatlands began to find favor with my senses.

Hog lagoons, turkey houses, and cow barns dot the landscape of Wilson, Nash, Pitt, and Beaufort Counties. The smell is unmistakeable, but not unwanted. The big diesel engines, with their weighted black smoke, push great harvests born in the rich topsoil and livestock down the long white line to markets from Murphy to Manteo. The pungent, tannin stained swamps that lie dormant, full of decaying leaf matter and organic mud, produce a stink only a provisioner of all things wild could appreciate. Pine sap, Honeysuckle, and Wisteria fill the gaps where the fragrance of hogs have yet to trod. The exhaust of a two stroke boat motor spins a thread through these communities that weave fishermen together like nets in pursuit of the sport they love, or simply dinner for their otherwise bare tables. Even just plain ol’ dirt can ground my soul with an aroma asphalt and concrete simply do not have.

Today was a good day. My journey back was similar to my journey down, but different. The anticipation of meeting my new, aromatic friends, like a crockpot of mixed ingredients that delight the senses, was rightly warranted. Those rural scents, foreign to the big city, rode shotgun on my return home. Like old war buddies, we reminisced and gave thanks for spaces where the horizon melds into the sky and a place where backcountry smells still matter.