Two forearms in black and grey fine line tattoos: a palm tree, a small bird, a paper plane, the word WILDERNESS and a line with a circle.

Palm tree and wilderness forearm tattoos

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two forearms are shown from above, each with several small fine line tattoos. The largest is a shaded palm tree on the left arm, with a small bird line and a folded paper plane shape above it, while the right arm carries the capitalised word WILDERNESS, a thin vertical line with a circle, and a short script inscription. The linework is delicate and the shading is soft and grey, set against a pale grey tiled floor.

Fine line Botanical Lettering Forearm Palm tree Bird Paper plane Lettering Script Circle Line

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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

The palm arrived in a tea chest from Lisbon, two fronds broken and most of its patience gone, and Hettie Marr was told to keep it alive until the spring sales. Nobody in Dunmore had seen a tree that tall indoors. Her father set it in the corner of the glasshouse where the heating pipes ran warm under the soil, and every morning she lifted the glass vent to let the wind in and sat with her back against the potting bench, counting the days by the envelopes stacked there.

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Most of the envelopes were from her aunt in Canada, who wrote in pencil about lakes so large they had weather of their own. One had WILDERNESS written across the flap in capitals, as though the word had been shouted and then pressed flat. Hettie had kept it, the way she kept the feather she found on the path and the length of string she used as a plumb line, a thin drop that hung from the rafter and settled, every morning, a fraction closer to the same mark on the floor.

In March she wrote a reply on the back of a seed catalogue, folded it into a plane with the sharp creases her father used for bills of lading, and threw it through the open vent. The wind caught it above the rhubarb, turned it twice over the wall, and carried it out across the rooftops towards the cold grey line of the sea.

That evening the palm had leaned towards the gap in the glass, as if it too wanted to see where the letter had gone. Hettie checked the pipes, shut the vent, and left the lamp burning for it. Morning would bring her aunt's answer or it would not, but the tree had already turned its crown to the open sky.