An excerpt from a recent paper I wrote for my creative non-fiction environmental writing class.

black-capped chickadee

It’s hard to explain, but Ohio has always been a place that I am from, even before I left. Ohio defines me and my relationships with other places.

I accumulate scents in my memory:

the scent of a North Carolina pine forest at dawn,

the damp salt and sand on an October beach in eastern Canada,

the gritty Utah smell of red desert rock and crushed sage,

the fresh smell of green vegetation high in the Wyoming mountains.

But it is Ohio I smell when I burrow my head into my pillow at night.