Punks, sweetgrass and summer

I am convinced that half of our adult lives are spent in trying to recapture the lost pleasures of childhood -- well, at least mine is. Long ago I waxed elegiac at The Broad View with "Remembrance of Toys Past." Lately I've been searching for something more ephemeral -- the scent of the past.

Does anybody else remember the summer smell of burning punks? You know, the long sticks of dried something (dung?) -- like incense but not perfumed except with a primal odor that must be encoded into our DNA. As kids, we'd light a punk and hold it between our teeth. It was supposed to repel mosquitoes but the real attraction was the curling tendrils of delicate smoke. I imagine Paleolithic campfires smelled like punks.

Years passed and the ancient folkways disappeared. DEET reigned supreme. It may be toxic but, by gum, it does the job.

There are a few places, though, that have preserved the past as if in amber, and they charge commensurately. The Vermont Country Store sells punks and mine were delivered yesterday. The price is $14.95 for 600 punks, plus shipping. Crazy, I know, but I've been sitting on the porch with the punks smoldering alongside and I don't regret a thing.

There's another scent memory that you might have experienced: sweetgrass. The scent of sweetgrass is intoxicating, an elusive yet totally memorable blend of vanilla, earth, hay and sky. Native Americans burn it ritually and some northeast tribes used sweetgrass in basketry for the tourist trade (not to be confused with the sweetgrass baskets made in the Gullah tradition in South Carolina).

I had one of those small lidded button or sewing baskets, bought on a family trip to Niagara Falls in the late '50s. (Dad drove our used 1952 powder-blue Chrysler sedan -- a dream car with a spacious back seat that a child could stretch out on and take a nap.) Somehow, the basket got misplaced and lost years ago. You can buy sweetgrass braids from those new-agey, herbal healing and ritual suppliers. But the old baskets are calling...