It is not yet dusk. My newborn is snuggled tight against my chest, teetering on the edge of drowsiness in a stretchy infant carrier. The thick, still humidity of a July evening is heavy on my lungs, wrapping around me like the bands of fabric tying my son against my heart. I’m putting one foot in front of the other up the cracked sidewalk of an uneven hill, pacing our neighborhood to put my baby to sleep. The sun hasn’t set and the heat from the day has settled in the streets.

My brain is a tangle of practicalities: toddler’s nap schedule, newborn’s feeding schedule, bedtimes for both and who is out of diapers. Did I defrost chicken for dinner tomorrow? I need to do that when I get back. Which books are due at the library? Did I put the movie that I wanted on hold? I still haven’t finished the show I was trying to watch while nursing. Is it worth picking up again? Do I need to try harder to make my toddler pick up his toys or is he not old enough yet? He’ll be three so soon. Should we have a party for him? Wait, did I RSVP to that graduation party we were invited to? I should buy a present at least. Maybe there was a registry. I’ll just check–

–no. No phone on this walk. I’m present in this moment, enjoying this brief time outdoors, my eyes taking in everything that is not a screen. The gift registry can wait.

That’s when I smell it.

I crest the hill, calf muscles screaming, and the thick tang comes over the top like a wave. It is so sudden, so unexpected, that I lose all thought of my momentum, and the momentum too. I stop. Sniff. Take it in.

I am ten years old again, pulling soft mittens from a gangly sapling, crushing them between eager, sweaty little hands and smelling the spicy scent. Sassafras. It’s fun to say, good to smell, and even more heady is the feeling of recognizing the leaves on a real tree after seeing pictures in a book. We are in the woods across from our house, my sisters and me, giddy with the independence of crossing the rocky creek alone and foraging for bits to fuel our imagined pioneer trek, our minds free from responsibility or any thoughts beyond our pretend game. And now we’ve found sassafras, and it smells just like we somehow knew it would.

The Boxcar Children, our fictional role models, would have made tea from the roots, but our practical parents with internet access have told us this could be dangerous. Reluctantly we leave the rough bark pieces alone after drinking in all we can of their root-beer scent, but the leaves are ours for the plucking.

“They smell like Froot Loops,” my second-youngest sister says, and we all agree, reluctantly on my part because Froot Loops, in all their contemporary artificial colors, do not fit into the scene my mind wants to set here in the forest with our scavenged food and our hard-won wilderness survival skills. But the sweet spice that the torn leaves release is, I have to admit, oddly reminiscent of faux-tropical cereal. The modern day is never far behind the game, reminders of our real home and stolidly boring breakfast bowls and needing to be back in time for dinner always stalking our attempts to go off-grid.

My phone buzzes–perhaps a reminder to RSVP to that party–and I am, again, back on the grid. Feet on the pavement. Sweat dappling my upper lip. Baby snoring in my Moby wrap. Some of my hair is starting to gray and some of my memories are starting to fade. Some of what it felt like to be ten in the woods with a baby blanket for a shawl and a stick to fend off imagined wolves has begun to dry up.

I crane my neck to see over dog fences and behind garages, but I can’t catch a glimpse of any sassafras trees. Maybe they are hiding in the little pockets of forest that are tucked around this just-south-of-suburban neighborhood, tangled out of sight in the undergrowth. Maybe I’d find them if I looked hard enough, ducked through bramble thickets and listened for bears, let my hands pick up dirt and my shoes leak creek water. Or maybe there’s nothing for my grown-up eyes to see, only a smell that dances through a memory, ancient and dark and rich as the roots of a wild tree.