Faceted mountain inside an inverted triangle

The theodolite finally sits level on the lip of the scree, and I have stopped pretending my hands are steady enough to draw a true line. Mr Abbott wants the ridge fixed before the thaw, so I take the bearings and you, wherever you are, can take the blame for my bad sums. The summit wears a cap of old snow that never quite melts, and from here the crags stack like slate tiles on a roof nobody finished.

Yesterday I cut a triangle into the back of the survey sheet, a frame to hold the view the way the church window holds the saint. Three lines, a level top and two sides closing beneath the peak. Inside it the rock broke into planes, each face catching the light at its own angle, and at the foot I drew the pines the way Father taught us, one stroke per needle and a smudge of shadow beneath. Abbott called it wasteful. He said a surveyor records the contour, not the feeling of it.

I did not argue. The pines at the bottom of the frame are the only things up here that are not leaning away from the wind, and I wanted them kept.

Stay well. Send me the good ink when the post comes up, and tell Mother the bread we bake for the lodge is still the best on the valley road.

Yours, Ilse