petrichor - n. - smell soil exudes after rain
It is snowing in New Jersey. Eight to ten inches of white manna will fall within the next seventy-two hours, freshening the sullied fifteen already on the ground. Although I adore everything about snow, except for the shoveling, I am one of legions looking ahead to spring and its equivalent precipitation: warm rain, and the petrichor that proceeds it.
Petrichor is a word that derives from the Greek words for rock and the blood of the mythological gods. Ostensibly, a chemist coined the term in the early 1960s, and it stuck. Perhaps it was the "bling" of the twentieth century? Yet, I am uncertain whether the word is actually beautiful enough to encompass the actual scent, that could result from God's talc that He dusts the earth with after showering it with moisture.
The snow doesn't produce the same effect as spring rain, but it does produce silence. There is nothing more quiet than the sound-proof booth produced when the sky is raining white and the ground is blanketed, masking petrichor, preserving it until spring.
If you are a poet, today's word may inspire olfaction and the verbiage to capture it.
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