Insect Repellent and the Stars

It is the smell of a certain kind of insect repellent that takes me to the stars. It takes me back more than ten years; takes me to a riverbank kilometres away from home. I was there in a place just outside of some cabins, surrounded by strangers that accompanied me on that rusty old bus that took us there. It was the place where all that was familiar were my sketchbook, my flashlight, and myself. No buzzing and no troublesome bites – it was only the serenades of distant crickets and the laughter of unfamiliar children from metres away. On those few Spring nights, I lay alone.

They say the sense of smell is, of the five basic senses, the one most attached to memories, the most emotional and sentimental. My youngest brother arrived home from a camping trip one night. He might have never noticed, but the scent of insect repellent followed him back. I noticed the scent first before I could even greet him, and in those few seconds, for the first time in about a decade, I was laying on the grass. I was transported to a time so far back that I was hardly a teenager, much younger than how old my brother is now. I wish I could recall where I was exactly; it was somewhere by that long, flowing Murray River that I had heard countless times about. We were sent camping there for our final year before the end of Year 7, not for any particular reason I knew of, but probably for cohort morale and to experience the river together. While I did enjoy the moments in the daytime that I managed to share with a few acquaintances, I spent most of my evenings alone. During the final hours past sunset, we were free to do what we wanted with whomever we wanted. Those were the hours when mosquitos thrived, celebrating at all the many adults and many children that had decided to pay them a visit, only to be disappointed by the strange chemical armour that protected them. 

I had no idea how long it had been since the last time I used, or even gone near, that brand of insect repellent. Maybe those October nights weren’t the last, but of all the times I ever used it, they were the most memorable. From its sweet yet sour scent, I felt the warmth of the cabin lights and the chatter of girls I would never know. I felt how its sourness made me homesick, a strange tangy taste in my gut. But, its sweetness also reminded me of how eager I was to see the clear night sky where the stars blanketed me in their awesome power. Every night I checked outside, I wondered, Which way did the sun set? What constellations could I remember? Which way was the wind blowing the clouds? And away on that sea of glitter, I never missed home; I never longed for a friend. I was in bliss. I was in outer space, watching.