CLOSE YOUR EYES, EXPERIENCE NEW PLACES WITH OTHER FOUR SENSES.

Byline: John Flinn San Francisco Examiner 

There was nothing to see. Thick gray clouds blotted out the mountains, and snowflakes fluttered out of the heavy sky. My wife, Jeri, walked along the Plain of the Six Glaciers, near Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies, and cursed her luck. She wouldn't be seeing any glaciers on this wretched day.

But then she heard the sounds - first the groaning, creaking voices of the prodigious rivers of ice, and then something more startling. On the mountain above her, hidden behind the veil of clouds, it started like a clap of thunder and finished like a sonic boom.

Somewhere nearby, enormous chunks of ice were breaking off a glacier and cascading down - one of nature's more impressive displays. Unable to see it, she concentrated on the spooky, otherworldly noises of the moving ice - the kind of sounds that once led American Indians to believe glaciers harbored human souls.

Had it been a bright, sunny day, Jeri probably wouldn't have remembered those sounds. The crackle and roar of the glaciers would have been mere background noise for the big visual show of the falling ice blocks.

With that in mind, I'm going to propose something radical for your next journey: Close your eyes. Not every minute of the day, but often enough to give your other four senses a chance to explore your tantalizing new surroundings.

I'll never forget the first time I set foot in a real old-fashioned New York delicatessen. The aromas were so thick they seemed to hang in the air like smoke. There were open cases of pungent cheeses; rafters hanging with musty, peppery salamis; and briny vats full of pickles. After inhaling all these wonderful smells, eating the food seemed almost superfluous.

Other places have their own unique smells: the earthy loam of a redwood forest, the cloyingly sweet incense of a Buddhist temple, the acrid chimney smoke from coal-burning fireplaces in the Lake District.

Special places have their own special textures, too. I remember the sensation of running my hands over sensuously smooth, history-worn temple columns in Luxor, Egypt, and chafing my legs against the burlap-rough skin and bristly hair of an elephant in Thailand.

Places also have their own signature sounds: the far-off bleating of sheep on a mist-shrouded Yorkshire hill, the gonging of cowbells in Swiss villages, the scratchy recordings of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer from Istanbul minarets.

Our taste buds, of course, have done a good job of holding out against visual hegemony. To me, the startlingly vibrant flavors of Italian gelato display, in their own way, a genius worthy of the Renaissance masters. Whether it's a frisky young white Burgundy or a Santa Fe chili sauce so hot it makes your bald spot sweat, your taste buds will tell you where you are.

Your other senses, and in particular smells, have a remarkable ability to exhume long-buried memories.

Not long ago I was sorting through a box of old maps, and I came across one from a journey to New Zealand a decade ago. I remembered noticing during that trip that Kiwi paper has a unique, characteristic mustiness about it. Now, sitting at home in my study, I unfolded the old map, pressed it to my nose and inhaled deeply. Instantly I was transported back to New Zealand as the memories came cascading out.

I can't think of a single picture - mental image or photograph - that can do that.