What the air does out here
The chest maker's shop at Mile 77 works cedar all day and keeps saffron in the till drawer. Boards stand racked by grain, shavings curl off the plane in one long ribbon when the wood cooperates, and every finished chest ships with a pinch tied in muslin in the corner, dry cedar and golden saffron over soft leather hinges cut in-house. The habit comes down from a grandmother's ledger and has never once been priced.
Who rides with it
Hope-chest families on their third generation of the same order. Sawdust admirers who buy nothing and stay an hour. The maker, whose ledger calls the saffron a rounding error and whose customers call it the reason they came.
Pair it at the next stop
This mile settles a debt from the mountain: the lodge desk at Mahogany Balsam, Mile 67, promised the polished grain would take up with spice, and here it has. The same arrangement waits deep in the Basin at Teakwood and Cardamom, Mile 108, for drivers who keep going.