A sharp, glass-clear cold had taken hold of the valley overnight, locking the ground into dark, ringing stone and coating the iron latch of the eastern yard gate in thick, geometric frost. Sunlight broke across the high granite pinnacles in crisp, brilliant ribbons of pale amber, though down along the terraces, the mountain shadows remained deep, indigo, and still. The air tasted faintly of frozen pine needle pitch, dry river gravel, and the crisp, acrid tang of oak smoke rising straight into the windless sky.
With the root house ventilation caps installed and adjusted, our attention turned toward the seed storage annex built into the cliff face behind the loom room. The mountain spring that fed our lower cold-well ran along a natural granite fault line forty feet above the annex roof. Wh
