Pine cone and branch on a thigh

The Scots pines above Harrow Gap have finally let their cones go, and I have been up there three mornings running with a sack over one shoulder and frost in my boots. You would laugh at me. I used Mr Eldon's old knife and still took the skin off my thumb on the first one. These cones are nothing like the squat brown ones we kicked about in the glen at home. They hang long and scaled, heavy as a fist, and they only open when the air is dry enough to say so.

The warden, a silent man called Ferris, watches me from his hut and says nothing, which I have decided is permission. He told me the trees were planted by a family who never lived to see them reach the ridge, and that every cone is a bet placed against the weather. Yesterday the wind came off the scree like a slammed door, and a limb as thick as my wrist cracked and dropped at my feet. Still on it was a cone so perfect I could not bear to leave it to the snow. The needles fanned out either side of it, sharp enough that I bled again picking the branch up, so I carried the whole thing down the switchbacks like a cross-bearer.

Ferris saw me come in and said only, "That one will sulk in your room." He was right. It has been on my windowsill since and every morning it has opened a little wider, scale by scale, as if it is counting the days until I notice.

I am sending you a handful of the seeds, wrapped in the blue handkerchief you gave me. Plant them where the wind cannot reach, and write to me when something green comes up. I will be waiting for the news the way the cones wait for the dry air.

Your brother, Tom