The afternoon heat settled over the valley floor like a warm, heavy blanket, stilling the upper branches of the white oaks and drawing a dry, herbal tang from the wild sage growing along the lower terrace wall. Down by the water, a grey heron stood motionless on a flat granite shelf, its shadow stretched long and thin across the river silt.
I was crouching in the cool, shaded alcove behind the smokehouse, fitting a set of hand-hewn ash slats into a drying frame for our late-summer harvest of native mushrooms. The wood was dry and lightweight, pale as bone, sanded smooth to prevent splintering when loaded with delicate fungi. Each slat had to slide into its corresponding wall groove with a snug, friction-fit tolerance—loose enough to remove for washing, but tight enough to prevent the tier
