My Room Smells Like the Woods

Well, more aptly, my room smells like pine trees and patchouli.
But, I like to pretend it smells like the woods. Even though most of us know the smell of the forest is something that is infinitely more complex than what candles and an open window (depending on where you are) can provide you with. Not to mention, the forests where I come from are a good mix between coniferous and deciduous trees, but I miss the smell of the cedars the most. 
That earthy scent. The perfect mix of decaying leaves and needles, of rotting wood, of the damp ground... of everything that makes it unique.

You won't smell the woods while you're treading the sidewalks of the city. You won't while you're stuck in traffic on the interstate, daydreaming you were anywhere else. You won't while you're sitting in a stuffy office. Or in the confines of a hangar, surrounded by the many chemical, synthetic smells of aircraft maintenance. You won't smell this on some muddy, miserable FOB in Afghanistan.

So maybe, this is why I like to pretend. Pretend I'm far away. Maybe on one of the running trails around my old high school.
Maybe on the peninsula, around a campfire with my family, like we spent a good number of my summers growing up.
Maybe in the mountains again. Or somewhere in the Skagit Valley, on some private property, sketching streams and calculating their velocity. The places I learned it isn't trespassing unless you get caught.

I'm sure we all have places that we like to run off to in our heads. These are the places I've picked, this time. But, studies have shown that certain smells can be linked closely to memory. 

It's silly. I thought this would alleviate some of the frustration I feel with the East Coast. (Before you lose your mind, by "East Coast" I really mean NOVA, DC and Maryland. And anything that falls along the I-95 corridor.)
But it hasn't.
And it's made me a little more homesick than I intended it to.

You know what I want to do? No, of course you don't. None of you are mind readers. I hope not at least. 

What I would love to do in a perfect world, under perfect (or even imperfect) circumstances, is get the hell out of the Marine Corps, find a spit of land somewhere. Buy that land. Build a damn cabin on it.
Preferably, I'd like this land to be a little out of the way.

Ehhhhh. To hell with it. I'll continue this rant some other time. It's too late, or early depending on your perspective, to stay up before another day of tedious Death by Powerpoint.


The things I look forward to everyday, right? Hmmph.
Shut up Wood, you're the one who signed up for this.