Small mountain range tattoo on the ribs

The ridge came out of the cloud at four this afternoon, three black teeth with snow packed into the gullies, and Ruth stopped the rover so hard that my tea went over the console. The survey office has them logged as Ridge Delta Four, which is what you call a thing when nobody has bothered to look at it. Ruth said they looked like the Cuillin on a bad day. I laughed, because she has never seen the Cuillin and only knows them from your postcards.

We spent two hours on the ridgeline taking core samples. The tallest peak has a crust of pale rock that catches the light like wet slate, and the middle one leans as if it is listening to something on the far side. The smallest, on the right, bends back toward the others. I climbed the last stretch alone while Ruth logged readings, and from the top I could see the basin where the meltwater runs silver, exactly where the old maps said it would not be.

So I have named them. The left peak is Gran, for the way she stood at the kitchen window, watching weather come over the hill. The middle one is Dad, because he would have shouted at the sky until it apologised. The little bent one is Nell, and if the office objects they can take it up with me on the next supply run. Ruth thinks I am being sentimental. She is probably right, but she also wrote the coordinates on the back of her glove so she would not lose them.

Send me a photograph of the real range when the window opens. I want to hold my ridge up against yours and see which of us got the mountains right.

Love, Mags