Petrichor

Once I wrote about favorite words. I recieved an warm response to it. Today I write about the word for an indescribable occurance. I mentioned it in an email to cousins, but couldn't for the life of me recall the word for it later on. The word is petrichor.

Petrichor is the pleasant smell that often accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather in certain regions. According to Australian researchers who coined the word in an isssue of Nature magazine in 1964, Petrichor is from oils given off by vegetation, absorbed into neighboring surfaces, and released into the air after a first rain. The word is derived from the Greek words petros, a stone, and ichor, the Greek term for the fluid that flows like blood in the veins of the gods.

I wasn't there after a rain, but I suspect that the rain on Uluru, Ayer's Rock, in the Australian Outback smells the same as the rain on Sweet Pea hill behind my childhood home, and in the Cave Hills of northwestern South Dakota.

It is hard to describe the sweet pungent smell of home after a long awaited rain. That, and the song of a Meadow Lark, are two of the sweetest things in the world.