A light, dry heat shimmered across the river stones as the afternoon sun reached its highest point over the valley. The wind had died down completely, leaving the air heavy with the sweet, rich fragrance of ripening blackberries and dry pine bark. In the upper pasture, grasshoppers clicked lazily among the tall stalks of timothy grass, their small sounds blending with the continuous, rhythmic wash of the river against the granite revetments below.
I sat on a smooth, flat-topped boulder near the edge of the stone-lined wellhouse, holding a short iron rasp, an oilstone, and a pair of brass hedge shears. The steel blades were worn along their cutting bevels from weeks of trimming back the thick briar bushes along the drainage ditches. I held the tool firmly against my knee, drawing the rasp
