Mountain lake landscape on upper arm

The branches have come back over the north shore, the ones with the black leaves that the old maps called rowan, though nobody has eaten a berry off them in my lifetime. You asked whether the lake is still there after the dry years. It is. It sits lower by a man's height and the reeds have moved inland, but at first light the water goes flat as slate and the whole hill stands on its head in it, snow cap and all, as if someone had painted the valley twice and hung one copy upside down to dry.

Yesterday I rowed out with the sounding line because the council wants a figure for the charter. Eleven fathoms off the boathouse, eight over the drowned chapel. I did not drop the line over the chapel. I sat with the oars shipped and watched the reflected firs go dark and then green as cloud crossed the sun, and I thought about the first survey men who came up here and must have believed the water was a window.

The flat water is what I wanted you to see. Bring the children up in spring, before the midges. Stand where the blue lake meets the green slope and you will not be able to say where the land ends. I have stopped trying. The reflection is kinder than the hill: it has no scree and no wind-scarred pines, just the lake holding the mountain a little longer than the mountain would like.

Come before the ice. Bring the spare oarlock pins, the ones Dad carved. Your loving sister, Maren.