Black and grey dotwork tattoo on the leg showing a circular mountain landscape with a moon, pine trees and a winding river, with the words not all those who wander are lost.

Mountain landscape in a circle with quote on leg

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A circular tattoo shows mountains, a large moon, a winding river and rows of pine trees, with a stippled dotwork sky around the moon. The phrase not all those who wander are lost is set in a rounded hand-lettered script that arcs over the top of the circle. The image is shot straight on in black ink and greys, with part of another tattoo visible at the lower left edge.

Dotwork Lettering Thigh Mountain Moon River Pine tree Landscape Quote Circle Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, lad, the fire won't talk for me. You want the story of Ida Bowen, who walked out of Cwm Teg the winter the Number Four shaft flooded, and came back with a moon in her coat pocket. Everyone in the row said she was lost. Her mother said so every morning at the kettle.

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The valley then had the river running grey with washings, the spoil tips climbing above it, and nothing green but the pines the company had planted to hold the scree. Ida took her father's lamp and a heel of bread wrapped in a cloth. She went up past the last pit wheel, where the colliery bell hung silent, because the men were in the dark and the bell had stopped for good.

She didn't come back that night, nor the next. On the third morning the whole row stood on the bridge and watched the snow lift off the ridge, and there she was, tramping down the track with her boots tied together by their laces and her face lit like a lamp. She'd gone over the tops, she said, and seen the whole valley laid out under a moon so big it turned the river to silver. From up there the mine was nothing but a smudge, and the pines looked like a row of women's hair combed the one way.

Her mother asked what she'd found. Ida said she'd found the way back, which was the same road, only seen from the other side. Nobody understood it then. I think about it every time I go up that track.