Fine line black tattoo of a mountain range above the coordinates 49.2827° N, 123.1207° W on the inner forearm.

Mountain range and coordinates on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A thin outline of a mountain range with three main peaks sits above a single line of coordinates set in a typewriter-style font. The linework is fine and even, with short interior ridge lines on the slopes, and the design is done entirely in black ink on pale skin. The arm rests against a dark knit sleeve with a plain white wall behind, keeping the focus on the tattoo.

Fine line Forearm Mountain Peak Coordinates Outline Landscape

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the chainsaw has finally died for good, so you can stop asking me to send it back to the man in Squamish. We are three days past the last road now, and the cook has taken to reading the tins aloud at supper, which is the only entertainment we get.

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Our job is to fix where the peaks sit so the district can draw its boundary lines. Mr Abbott, who keeps the instruments, insists the summit we call the Anvil is two hundred feet further north than the old maps say. I have spent a week sighting it with the theodolite and writing figures in the field book, and each night I copy them out in ink so they will not run in the wet. I can never remember the seconds, so I write them down twice.

On the last morning the cloud lifted off the ridge all at once, the way it does here, and the three peaks stood up in a row like men waiting to be introduced. Abbott looked at the numbers, then at me, and said a map is only a promise that someone came back to check. He let me take the final reading myself. I took it, wrote it down, and then I stood there longer than I needed to, cold fingers on the brass, just looking.

When we get down I am going to ask the printer in town to set the coordinates in the typewriter face from the survey office, the one with the crooked serif on the sevens. That way, whenever anyone opens the file, the place will be written the way I first saw it. Keep my side of the bed warm. Love, Ruth.