It is that time of year again. Not quite summer anymore, nor completely fall, but some season in between. School is just around the corner and markets are full to bursting with summer's bounty. You find that you, too, are beginning to wind down from the limitless summer of late nights reading and long days writing, into the solid routine of teaching. It is that transient month of living up your free time and getting ready for the fall.
But nothing tells you that the season is changing more than the smell of green chile being roasted. In all the places you've traveled, the things you've seen, nowhere on earth is there chile roasting like in your home, New Mexico. You watch as they pile a sack full of ripe chile into the caged roasted and fire it up. Soon, the chiles are cracking, their tender skin peeling and charred. The air is perfumed with the smell of this roasting fruit, a smell akin to burning sage or hot spices. This is the smell of your land.
All at once, this smell alone brings back a flood of memories: family Friday night green chile stew with fresh tortillas and beans, a micro-brew and good conversation; the soothing fall ritual of peeling sacks of roasted chiles to freeze and put by for the year, hands tingling from the spiciness; the bouts of homesickness when you lived away, cured only by your makeshift attempts to roast chiles in your oven. It is the smell of pure comfort and nourishment, of home and self, the spice of the earth buried in the veins of the chile and your skin.
Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!