Mountain range and pine forest on a forearm

The ovens were already hot when I started this, so the letter will smell of rye by the time you get it. Dad's old sack of flour came in on the van last night, grey as cement, and I stood over it at three with a torch in my teeth, deciding whether the dough would forgive me for rushing it. It did. It always does, which is the only thing about bread I trust.

Outside the shop window the ridge is still only a shape. Once the sky starts to lighten you see the peaks come up out of the dark one at a time: the big grey shoulder first, then the notch we used to call the Bishop's Teeth, then the pines running down the slope as if someone had combed them flat. Mrs Aldana from the chemist says the cloud that sits on the top in autumn is the same cloud that stops over our roof and drops a fine rain onto the flour. I think she is probably right. Everything up here is connected by weather, and by bread, which is the same thing in the end.

Dad would have hated the new van and loved the flour, and he would have stood where I'm standing now, arms folded, pretending the sunrise was none of his business. I keep thinking about the walk we took the summer before he went, when we climbed as far as the last hut and the sky was dusted with grey dots like someone had shaken a sieve over it. He said mountains only look solid from a distance. Up close they are a thousand small edges, each one holding a little light. I didn't understand him then. I think I do now, standing here with my hands in the dough.

The first batch is cooling on the rack and the windows have gone the colour of weak tea. I've scored the top loaf with three peaks and a line of trees, the way you'd sketch them on a napkin. Come down before the snow and cut it open with me. We'll see whether the crumb is as mountainous as the view.