Kristen Lindquist

Aromatherapy

We’ve just started down the trail when he pauses near a line of tracks in the snow, asks, “Smell that?” I inhale a deep breath of cold air, picking up notes of spruce from the surrounding forest, and give him a questioning look. “Fox,” he says, pointing to a splash of deep yellow urine on a snow-encrusted trailside stump. “Bend down and take a whiff.” I kneel. From about two feet away, a skunk-spray stink hits my nostrils. “You like that?” I ask, wrinkling my nose. He shrugs, smiles. “That’s winter in the Maine woods.”

trail junction
a doe with a fawn
tests the air

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About the Author

Kristen Lindquist is a frequent book reviewer and the coordinator of the Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Award for Haibun. Her books include island (2023, Red Moon Press), which won second place in the 2024 HSA Merit Book Awards, and It Always Comes Back, winner of the 2020 Snapshot Press eChapbook Award. She lives in Midcoast Maine. Read more: kristenlindquist.com/blog.

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