FIELD NOTES: Smell the Dirt
~ by Jim Eagleman
The“ muddy month of March,” as some friends call it, followed by the warming days of April, is a long awaited time for many. The wood pile gets a break from constant visits, daily trips to and from the shed come to a halt, and ashes frequently poured on the compost pile are reduced to a gray smeer. Snow shovels and windshield scrapers are stored away for another year. The snow blower wasn’ t even used this winter. Neighbors and I only shoved off our hill one time. A few days of winter-like weather may remain, but roadside ditches full of chorus frogs, followed by spring peepers is a clue. We are well into spring.
My most vivid memory of spring had to do with a particular smell. It was like no other.
As a kid in our little Pennsylvania town, I remember a bulldozer my dad hired to remove a long-neglected pile of dirt. It arrived one warm spring day to level the area. I had just returned from school in a wool sweater nearly soaked and itchy. I heard the roar of the engine as I walked up our hill. Near the house, the dirt pile was a favorite haunt for my buddies and me. Tunnels, ditches, and twig bridges made up our little town for our toy trucks and tractors. The operator waved at me, then motioned to the pile. He saw the toys on top and pointed to them. It took several trips up and back to get them out of the way, then I stood back with a small bulldozer in my hand. Tall, black smoke plumes and loud clanging of the tracks kept me captivated as I watched the machine tear into the hill. Massive amounts of dirt were scraped off with each passing. By suppertime, it was reduced to a clean and smooth pad. But what held my attention, lasting for several days, was the smell of the newly exposed earth.
We remarked about the aroma of fresh dirt permeating the air that night at supper. My mom said she loved to think a flower garden would happen if the new flat area could be planted. But my dad, a veterinarian with a private practice, had other plans. The area was to enlarge a small parking lot for his patients. Soon cars parked where the dirt pile once stood.
When it came time to plant our vegetable garden, I smelled the new soil again. My dad walked behind a tiller. Long rows of beets, peas, and bean seeds were sprinkled in the furrows. The large vegetable garden supplied us with all the produce we’ d need for the year. It was an important family project, but it looked like all work to me. I held the dirt clumps, soft, cool, and crumbly, up to my nose and turned them over and over. At the end of the row, he yelled to me to get a can to hold all the fat earthworms he found. My education about soil was to continue.
When we went fishing later, sitting on a stream bank, I felt the mucous-like slime on the worm as I baited a hook. My dad said the liquid body covering was to help them breathe, and that with a pair of tiny
46 Our Brown County March / April 2017