Awareness Drill - Sense of Smell

This drill will cost you nothing, or possibly one onion if your refrigerator is not well stocked. It takes 5 minutes to play, but if you find yourself having a good time, it can go much, much longer. It also requires a partner, and is suitable for work with kids.

This drill comes from an interesting source - the 1919 book "Scouting Games", by BSA founder Sir Robert Baden-Powell. Take a look through the book; boys were trained to be straight-up miniature ninjas 100 years ago. (There was even a "Master At Arms" merit badge, retired in 1911, which was earned through fencing, quarterstaves, archery, boxing, and wrestling. Few den mothers would allow this today, I'm afraid...)

I'll tell you right now: all things being equal, women are better at this game than men. People who spend tremendous time outdoors are better at it than their office-dwelling counterparts. I spent 4 weeks living like a caveman in a desert; 2 weeks after getting back to civilization, I was able to find a grove of Paw-Paw trees from 20 yards away based on smell alone - I could smell the fruit rotting on the ground. Your sense of smell can be sharpened, and will likewise atrophy without use. Start sniffing things now.

The most straight-forward version of this drill is to have your partner take an onion or similar pungent object, and rub it on various objects in your yard (out of your view, of course). Make it easy on yourself and do it at nose-height for the first few attempts. Then see if you can discover where that onion has been rubbed. The BSA manual recommends that the finder be blindfolded; I think that is because rubbing an onion on things leaves a wet mark and sometimes other visual clues like flakes of peel - but I don't think you need to start off blindfolded. For most people, the drill is challenging enough with your eyes open.

Permutations on this involve closing your eyes and having your partner bring various objects up to your nose. See if you can identify what they are made from. Aluminum has a sharp smell to it. Wax, not so much. Raid your kitchen on this one. Tomato plants have a similar smell to cut tomatoes, especially when the stem is crushed. Not so much in the leaves. What does your shirt smell like? Your wife's shirt?

In his excellent blog, Rory Miller talks about the sense of smell often. Nobel Laureate and physics genius Richard Feynman used to impress (disturb?) people at parties by having a guest pick a book from his shelf at random and open to a page while Feyman was out of the room. He would then smell the guest's hand and find what book they had touched, often finding the exact correct page.

Start working on this under-utilized sense now. Experiment. Discover. Play. Your environment is flooded with smells - see how much information is out there, free for the taking, that you never noticed before.