The sky above the valley had turned the color of weathered lead, low and thick with moisture that had not yet broken into rain. A heavy stillness lay over the river basin, dampening the usual ambient rattle of dry oak leaves and smoothing the surface of the water into a dark, mirror-like channel. The air tasted faintly of ozone, peat smoke, and cold stone, signaling a sharp shift in the mountain weather pattern.
I stood in the covered entryway of the root cellar, holding an iron gauge rod and a ledger board bound in oilskin. We were assessing the structural tension of the floor supports before transferring our preserved goods into the lower vaults. The stone arches beneath us had been set during the early summer construction, but rock settled under the weight of changing soil moisture, an
