The island, the Block, offers so many things past the windy roads that vehicles kick dust on, past the bays and sands, past the nights and drinks and stars. Strangely enough, it offers smells and mud and stairs.
At the Block's Mohegan Bluffs, it smells of mud, baking clay-like in pools under the sun. And it smells of children crying as they run from the sun-screening parents and it smells of salt and ocean breezes that candles fail at imitating. But to the mud, you can hear the faint sounds of dried mud cracking into pieces that stick on skin, making everyone look like stocky giraffes. It’s the mud that transforms into a photograph hung on a wall and it’s the muddy clay that draws artists and Instagram-ers alike.
To the Mohegan Bluff stairs, it smells of wood that hasn’t rotted, but certainly isn’t new. The stairs smell like sweat. And salt, again. This time from children crying before they’re swooped into parents’ irritated-yet-loving arms. The stairs are unavoidable and so the island also smells of the sweat of aching tourists and locals who brave the 141 steps. It smells of softened wood and sanded down rails.
And the Block's view smells like vacation and five o’clock somewhere.
