Black ink line drawing on cream paper of a banner reading PRONE TO WANDER above pine trees, a stag and hatched hills, a design with no body placement shown.

Prone to wander banner with pine trees and deer

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows a curved banner lettered PRONE TO WANDER, with a tall pine in the centre and a small cluster of trees beneath it. A stag stands on the right-hand hill, and the ground is built from fanned, hatched ridges. The work is in black ink with fine parallel strokes and no colour, set on a cream paper background.

Fine line Banner Pine tree Deer Stag Hill Forest Lettering

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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 Tom, The stag came down to the lower pines again this morning, the same broken-tined fellow who likes to stand on the far ridge as though he owns the view. I left the heel of the loaf on the step for him, though I suspect he thinks it is meant for you. Mr Pryce says the road over Hollin Pass will be shut by Michaelmas, so if you mean to walk home before the snow, it has to be this week, not next.

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You wrote that the town had a painted banner strung across the square with some saying on it, something about being prone to wander, and that you laughed until the pie man told you to mind your manners. I did not laugh. I stood in the hut doorway with your letter and thought about the year you took the mule over the scree without a word to anyone and came back with a bruised shin and a fistful of blue gentian you had dug up for me. Gentian does not grow below the snowline, Tom. I never asked where you found it.

The frost is starting to fill the hollows of the hill like ink in the grooves of a carved stamp. I have counted the fence posts twice and the ledger once, and the figures come out the same: two ewes lost, one lamb, and a gap at the table where your chair was. The woodcutters have cleared the old larch nearest the path, so the view is wider than it used to be. You can see the valley road all the way to the bend now.

If you come, leave the mule in Ardle and walk the last hour. Keep to the cairns. I will have the stove lit and the kettle on, and there is a place by the window that nobody has sat in since you left. If you do not come, I will understand, and I will keep watching the bend anyway. Mind the cornice on the east side. Yours, Ada.