Every so often, in the winter, the Puget Sound gets a “polar express” wind from Alaska. I don’t know whether it is a scent or an absence of all the usual scents, but everything smells different: clean beyond fresh. The skies were an amazing clear, fresh, clean blue (“The bluest skies you’ve ever seen are in Seattle” was probably written about days like that.) They are rarely ever that clear any more.

Growing up I lived on the north end of an island in the Puget Sound so the wind came over miles of water and hit without taint or impediment. I lived on a trail not a road. Coming home from school on those clear, cold days when I got  to the top of the trail I would spread my arms out and run down into the wind.

Often life was not great: my mother suffered from depression and home wasn’t pleasant a lot of the time; I was painfully shy and hated school. The trail through the woods was a place I loved, between two places that were not so great. When I ran into that clean fresh wind everything felt right. It blew everything away and running into it was heaven. The feel and smell (or lack of smell) from the cold, north wind always takes me back to that feeling.

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “The Transporter.”