John Clark considering an aspect of fiction that I find quite intriguing-smells and sounds. Aside from their ability to set or frame a scene in a story, they can do other things like help the reader to sense a mood, or foreshadow what is coming. In this post, I’m focusing on ones I think have a Maine essence.

Let’s start with smells. Have you ever considered the variation in how fog smells. When it rolls in across clam flats, it has a most distinct odor, but in other parts of Maine, it’s a completely different one. If you live on a rockbound part of the seacoast, it’s saltier and has a brisk tang, River fog, particularly in late fall, can waft the subtle scent of decaying leaves, while when it’s anywhere near a paper mill it lends credence to the old Maine adage “It smells like Rumford.”

There are other smells of note. Passing logging and chip trucks bathes one with powerful scents, mostly of pine, fir, and occasionally cedar. One of my favorites is the smell of a blueberry field baking in hot summer sun. It’s not like what a crushed blueberry emits, more like something edging toward combustion. Other natural Maine smells include crushed evergreen needles, particularly cedar, and sweet fern.

Then, there’s the smell of smoke. I grew up in the era of open burning dumps. The cloying blend of plastic, paper, and leftover dregs of household chemicals could be smelled far and wide on a damp day. Smoke from burning wood, whether up a chimney, or from a campfire is comforting to me. I remember one night, waiting for a meteor shower when Beth and I sat on the public dock at Great Moose Pond in Hartland. Someone had an outside fire on the opposite side of the lake, and it was relaxing to watch the smoke drift across the water until we could smell it.

That same smoke smell, when it comes from a burning house, or a forest fire, has just enough difference to trigger a primal sense of unease, reference the gloom of ash particles each of the past few summers, generated by huge, uncontrolled fires in Canada.

Even snow has a smell if you pay attention. It comes from the drier kind and is enhanced by falling temperatures.

Sounds are equally interesting. Let’s begin with Red Sox baseball on radio. I swear that no matter which game you listen to, the crowd noise in the background is the same.

Other sounds that stand out to me include kids playing. It’s a mix of screams, laughter, and excitement. Then there’s the ever-present rumble/rush we hear where we live that emanates from I-95 a couple hundred yards away. It’s punctuated by an occasional and hard to describe sound when a semi, gets too close to the side of the road and hits the rumble strip. Those semis, especially logging trucks, fill the air with a brrrrrrt as they jake-brake to decelerate. That latter sound is particularly noticeable when you’re in the Maine North Woods.

Float planes also have a unique sound, one that, for me, creates an image of it heading to a remote trout pond well away from any road. Two other woodland sounds are the whine of a chainsaw, followed by the crack-thunder as a huge tree falls to the forest floor.

Two more are the lonely sound of a train whistle (we hear them several times a day here in Waterville), and the steady sound of a lobster boat or scalloper as it traverses salt water on its way to or from a fishing trip. One memory from when we lived on Sennebec Hill Farm in Union was how we could hear the train whistle all the way from the depot in Warren on damp days.

If you spend any time in the woods, you’re familiar with a plethora of sounds, scolding jays and red squirrels, crows, the drumming of a partridge, the slap of a beaver’s tail, the rat-tat-tat of a woodpecker, and the approaching sounds of an as yet unseen critter. Will it be a squirrel, a deer, or something more unusual. The anticipation is always there.

I offer these scents and sounds as opportunities to set a mood or scene in your work. Sometimes a simple reference to one of these can replace a lot of clunky dialog. Imagine, if you will, a lost victim, terrified and near wits end. They hear the sound of running water. Will it lead them to safety, or expose them to someone/something dangerous and lethal?

I’m curious as to what scents and sounds you might have a preference for that represent real Maine.