It was during this trip, somewhere around Giverny, that I began to wonder if it would be possible to create an en plein air sniffing group — that is, an informal society of scent enthusiasts who would be happy and willing to sit outdoors, together, and inhale the air.

I was drawn to the simplicity of the project. Rather than lugging heavy and cumbersome easels, canvasses, paint boxes, and palettes, we would need nothing more than our own noses, a small notebook and pencil in which to jot down fragrance notes, warm clothing for cool days, straw hats for hot.

— Author Laurence Fearnley (aka Kanuka), in Sniff it: the novelist who wants to smell New Zealand at Newsroom.

Reader and regular commenter Kanuka is on Radio New Zealand this week: "Award winning Dunedin writer Laurence Fearnley tells Kathryn Ryan about scent-mapping, and her other current quest to find the best writing by New Zealand mountaineers. Laurence is developing a series of personal essays which map out the landscape through its ever changing aromas. She's also co-editing an anthology of NZ mountaineering writing which is set to be published next year, focusing on female and Maori climbers before 1950."

See also: Scent mapping Signal Hill at Corpus, plus Wikipedia's entry on Signal Hill in Dunedin, New Zealand.