Two-panel photo of black and grey forest tattoos, with a pine silhouette and bare branching trees, and a small bird on a forearm.

Forest and pine silhouette tattoos on an arm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The left panel shows a dense pine tree beside tall, bare branching trees that fade into a misty background, with a blue-grey tint to the ink. The right panel shows a solid black pine silhouette with jagged, layered branches and a small bird in flight at the top left, set against pale skin. Both images are close crops with the tattoos filling most of the frame.

Blackwork Botanical Forearm Forest Pine tree Bare tree Bird Silhouette Tree

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down where I can see you, our Danny, and leave that kettle alone, it's been on since dinner. You want the story of the Ashgill wood? Right. Before there was a pit at Ashgill there was only the trees, black pine up the hill standing like men in a queue, and the birch down by the beck that went bare every winter whatever anybody prayed for.

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When the company sank the shaft in 1884 they needed props for the roadways, and they felled the pines to the stumps in a single summer. My great-grandad Tom was one of the fellers. He always said the trees groaned going over, though I'd say that was just the sap. Afterwards the hill was nothing but stumps, and the birch stood about like widows with their arms out. The men went down the drift every morning, and the birch kept its branches bare as bone.

Then one March a wren came in from nowhere and sat on the winding wheel and wouldn't be shifted. Tom swore it was the same bird his mother kept in a cage back in Consett. Whenever the air went bad below, that wren went quiet and the men came up. Nobody lost a man from Ashgill while that wren was about, and nobody could tell you where it roosted.

Here's the bit I never understood. The company planted pines again in the forties, and they grew tall and black and ragged, and when the colliery shut the hill went green over the old stumps. Your granddad used to say the trees were only waiting. Now go on, take the biscuits and get to bed. Listen to that. That's a bird on the gutter, and I'll swear it's the same one.