Scent sure is a funny little sense.

As I pull up to the parking lot at work and the conditions are perfect...When the moon is just right, and the clouds and fog are just low enough, and the temperature is just crisp enough that the humidity emits the best scent ever, the scent of the salty water. Smells just like the ocean and I'm taken back to a little town down in the south of New Zealand. I'm riding my bicycle along a never ending street late at night. The town has gone to sleep, I'm the only one out. The fog has rolled in and settled upon the streets, stopping time. The seemingly endless road is lined with lamps, but the fog has defused the light making everything appear to be in the twilight zone. The stillness is eerie, but also safe, as if I'm in a dream and my surroundings are something I've fabricated in my mind. I feel so vulnerable, not knowing what lurks just past my sight. The void of movement is a padding as though it's impossible that there is another creature out taking in that same sight, the same air, the same scent that the ocean has brought in.
Some nights I take my time getting home, basking in the quiet solitude, enjoying the thought of being in my dream world where everything is mine and created just for me. Other nights my legs can't peddle fast enough to get me safe and inside back to the noise produced by the announcers on the telie, and back to the scent of boxed wine and baking tarts, the the friendly chatter of the day's events. But still in the back of my mind is the scene I rushed in out of. Know, years later I still play this nightly occurrence over and over in my mind. Taking me back to the time where the only thing that mattered was what I was seeing and experiencing right then and there.
As I pull into the lot and others are complaining of the scent of the lake, thinking that it is too much to bother with, I rememeber what the smell can be and what it represents and it brings a smile to my face. I don't know why these things all have to be lined up for the phenomenon to happen but when it does it's the portal to one of the best moments and memories i can have.