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  1. I inhaled Mike. Not so much his glandular atmosphere, but the smell of his travels. It was different depending on the season. These sessions were usually at night, after he moved upstairs in a torrent of paw steps that landed in bed. This was when I would ask him about his day and he would offer a foot to rub and smell. In the summer, when the trails through the grass wore down to the clay, there was the unmistakable trace of iron and silica. Inhale deeply and read the grass clippings, the dandelions. Mike’s pads bore the cargo of his passages. In the spring, lemon balm or spearmint were carried great distances by their host. In the fall…there was lavender from our neighbor’s garden. Buried deep in his winter fur, Mike wore the smell of snow, especially after the blizzards of 2009 and 2010.
    Michael Ondaatje writes of this phenomenon in The English Patient: “Whenever her father was alone with a dog in the house he would lean over and smell the skin at the base of its paw. This, he would say as if coming away from a brandy snifter, was the greatest smell in the world. A bouquet…It’s a cathedral.”
    Mike wore his most intoxicating perfume after walks on Capitol Hill, where great knots of rosemary oiled his fur where he had bent down to smell the traces of those who came before. Karen planted rosemary to the side of our front door, intending it for Mike.
    I was reminded of this musk a few weeks after Mike passed away. The occasion was a plate of potatoes, salted and seasoned with sprigs of rosemary, which were piled to the side of the dish. The smell vanished the room and the sounds within it. I was burying my nose in the fur…inhaling the layers and imagining their origins. I only caught the last half of my companion’s inquiry. I smiled and returned to earth. I hope to fly there again soon.

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