Here & Now

Did you ever catch a scent that transported you instantly back in time to a precious moment or a treasured person? The heady perfume of a gardenia bush takes me back to languid summers in my hometown of Savannah, Ga. The smell of Coppertone never fails to conjure up long-ago Sunday afternoons on Clam Pass beach with my two free-spirited, sun-kissed children.

To me, every beach has its own distinctive smell. Although I've lived here in paradise for 18 years, I still feel breathless the moment I cross the Sanibel Causeway onto Periwinkle Way, where the musky scent of Australian pine mixes with the sea air to invoke the summer that I turned 20, discovered this island and became an incurable shell-seeker. A storm far out in the Gulf had stirred up a bed of angel wings-huge ones-and hundreds of perfect white specimens lay unbroken all along the shoreline. I assumed this was normal, so I took only a few. I never saw such rare bounty again. Recently I found my copy of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea, which I first read on a Sanibel beach. As I reread the familiar passages, I could actually smell the island and feel its magic.

There's a path to the beach on Captiva Island near the pioneer cemetery and chapel where an intoxicating jasmine-like scent wafts suddenly on the breeze and then disappears, like the spirit of a beautiful woman who might still linger there. Long-timers will know what I'm talking about.

Fort Myers Beach has its own unique smell: a cacophony of honky tonk (cotton candy, fried grouper sandwiches and beer) and shrimp boats disgorging their premium cargo of sweet pink Gulf shrimp. I took my first deep-sea fishing trip there, and for years a little fishing shack just off the Sky Bridge was the only place I could go for a cardboard box of live blue crabs to bring home to Naples to steam for dinner. Freshly caught fish and shellfish have no "fishy" odor-just the clean, salty, exhilarating scent of the sea.

The beaches of Keewaydin-especially mid-island, where you rarely encounter another two-legged creature that doesn't have feathers-smell white. Still, pure, virginal white. At night, they smell black. Inky, cashmere-blanket black. No Coppertone, no shrimp boats, no jasmine, no nothing-but a scent just the same.

In my 12 years as a travel journalist, I've collected a memory bank of scents that can invoke an experience as richly as a photograph. Mussels and garlic recall a sidewalk café in Brugge. Desert sage conjures up a romantic weekend at the Taos Country Inn, New Mexico. Wet, bone-chilling air invokes an icebreaker ship in the frozen Gulf of Bothnia. And no matter where I've been, on my return to RSW airport, I breathe in the gentle nurturing fragrance of the humid Gulf air that slows me down, softens my skin and centers me back into myself. I hungrily filled my lungs with it when I was 20, back when we collected our luggage right on the tarmac, and I still feel the same even with our gleaming new world-class facility.

Luckily you don't have to fly away and come back to take the breathing test for yourself. Just book a 15-minute parasail experience over the Gulf of Mexico at Marco Island or Vanderbilt Beach. While you're floating in absolute silence, perhaps watching a 300-pound loggerhead turtle paddling toward her nesting place (yes, it's nesting season!), or a pod of dolphins cavorting in the turquoise water, take a deep breath of the languid summer air. Parasailing on a clear blue day with heaven below and heaven above is pretty close to a religious experience.

For many, summer is defined by the mouth-watering aroma of a Fourth of July barbecue. Where I grew up, everybody had barbecue on the Fourth of July: chicken or ribs, or more likely, both. Down South, barbecue means pork, not beef, which purists view as some kind of aberration they practice out there in Texas. In any case, barbecue sauce was and still is pretty much a man-thing. Every man I know believes he possesses the one true secret to the perfect sauce. Steve Tallaksen, chef at the Toucan Grille on Bonita Beach Road, grills up some of the best barbecue in the region each Fourth of July weekend and again on Labor Day. He claims the secret of life is Pickapeppa, a tangy but not hot Jamaican sauce readily available on market shelves. Chef Steve's signature sauce also includes, among other things, a healthy shot of dark rum, garlic, molasses, soy sauce and Tabasco.

It's divine on a platter of giant pink Gulf shrimp right off those boats at Fort Myers Beach. And oh, those juicy, smoky, rum-infused ribs. Can't you just smell them?

Till next time, savor the moment.