Governor's Island in August

Yesterday Governor's Island (once Nut Island) seemed to have been haunted by delicious smells. There was the smell of the harbor, which blew in strongly from the West, where waves crashed in thwarted expectations against a retaining wall. Maybe it wasn't delicous, but I'm told it smells much better than it did in the 70's before the clean water act gave it a new life. There was a burst of licorice air over by the ferry to Brooklyn, but strangely my friend smelled beef jerky at the same spot. Later a waft of apples there restored to apples any scrap of lost glamour.

This old house, one of the few smaller wooden structures on the island, had that old house smell, even on the outside. I remember that smell most from adventures in a ruin down where I grew up in Virginia, we hoped to find interesting things but what was it? Just old papers.