Our national obsession with certain smells is returning alongside autumn. Campfire smoke, cinnamon brooms and wet leaves, apple and nutmeg and anything crumble … you know what I mean. But so many more scents deserve our attention. I grew up in a “fragrance-free” house bedecked with electric candles, sensitive-skin detergents, and Dial soap—it was a sort of blank canvas for aromas. In my mind, everything from fresh bread to Comet powder existed in a vacuum, on a pedestal. I began to love the dual transportive effect of smell: some scents yank us backward into the perfumed past, while others propel us into unfamiliar dimensions, forcing the imagination to build a new ecosystem populated with those notes. And all this from such miniscule, invisible particles of information!