Small black fine line tree tattoo with roots and star-like motifs in the branches, placed centrally on a person's upper back below the neck.

Small tree tattoo on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A small tree with a thin trunk, spreading branches and roots sits centrally on the upper back, with small star-like motifs scattered above the crown. The linework is fine and solid black with no shading, and the design is shown in a single dark ink. The photo is taken from behind, with the subject's hair pinned up and a dark green jumper off the shoulders against a patterned curtain.

Fine line Back Tree Root Branches Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mairi had been told the tree on Scarrow Head was dead, and for thirty years she had believed it, until the morning she saw it in leaf from the wheelhouse of the Gannet Lass. It was not leaf exactly. It was the pale silver underside of something that caught the first light and threw it back across the water, and the old men on the quay called it a mark, a thing you steered by when the fog came down off the Minch.

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Her father had taught her the bearings. Keep the tree dead astern, the stone chimney open to port, and you would clear the Vraic reef with the tide on the turn. He never said why the tree was there, only that someone planted it before the lighthouse, before the harbour wall, before anyone thought to paint numbers on the rocks.

The fog came down at four. Dougie Lamond, who had never listened to a word her father said, was three boats behind and calling on the radio that he could see nothing at all. Mairi turned the wheel, found the silver branches through the murk, and held them dead astern while the water shallowed under her keel.

When they tied up at dusk, the crew stood on the slip and looked back at the headland. Little pale lights hung above the crown of the tree, sharp as sparks, and Dougie, who had sworn at her all afternoon, took off his cap. "Well," he said. "Somebody knew what they were doing."