i was born in a little French town in the rolling plains of northern Manitoba, near a range of low hills called, grandiosely, "The Riding Mountains". My earliest memories are of green forests, golden fields, blue lakes, and four seasons that changed the landscape of my world from white to green, faded into red and brown, and then white again. The scents of the prairie seasons lies buried deep in my brain...the crisp clean nose-pinching smell of snow...the long wet watery smell of spring rain...the robust green scent of hay and wheat and flax and barley in high summer...the thin icey threatening odor of the coming storms behind the plummy ripened fruit of autumn...deep, deep smells...memories connected to them...the explanation that the olfactory gland is near the memory center of the brain is not sufficient to say why smells make us remember, make me remember. this morning, all in a rush, i was a little girl again, standing in the newly cut grass and surrounded, infused with the living growing waking-up smells of a country lane at dawn. i stood there, dogs nosing along in the grass beside me, and let the memories come along with the dewey hushed moonset...long i stood. then walked again, happy dogs at my feet...walked in a gentle green embrace of remembrance...