Black and grey fine line tattoo of mountains and trees inside dotted circular arcs, placed on the upper back beside the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mountain scene within arcs on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A small tattoo of a mountain range with a dark treeline sits on the upper back, to the side of the shoulder blade. Fine dotted and solid arcs curve around the landscape, and the peaks are shaded in grey with the trees rendered in darker ink. The image is in black and grey with a plain, light background, and the wearer's head is turned away from the camera.

Fine line Geometric Back Mountain Tree Landscape Arc Dotted circle

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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 Tomas, The lamps along the canal went out at half past one, and I am still at the drawing board with your postcard propped against the inkpot. Mum thinks you are in Lyon. I have told her nothing, which is the first lie I have told her in years, and it sits in my chest like a bad oyster.

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The card shows a range I do not recognise, peaks shaded in grey pencil, a black fringe of spruce along the bottom. You wrote only, 'Found the line. Don't tell the surveyors.' I have spent the night trying to find it on the Ordnance sheets, and I have drawn your bearings in ink: three solid arcs, then the dotted ones you insisted on, the way you always marked what you had not yet walked. Every circle closes on the same point, a col that appears on no map in the drawer.

At four I gave up and went down to the yard where the night porters keep a brazier going. Old Hollis, who once carried a theodolite across the Channel, studied my sketch for a long time. 'Dotted means it's still moving,' he said. 'Solid means someone's been.' Then he tapped the trees with his pipe stem. 'Your brother never could draw a forest without making it look like it might walk.'

So I am writing to ask you, plainly, whether the mountain is still there when you look back. If it is, I will come. Bring the compass with the cracked glass, and leave a lamp burning in the window of the hut. I will find my way up by its light, one dotted line at a time.