Ribeye on the pine ridge, cooked on a single trestle.

Two steaks, a hot pan, a mortar of thyme and salt, and the sun going down over the valley.

We drove up before four so the fire would have time to settle. The trestle table is two sawhorses and a slab of pine we found at the sawmill in Douma; it lives in the truck now.

The ribeyes came out an hour before cooking. Salt, nothing else, and time on the olive board while the coals turned white.

The pan goes straight on the stones at the edge of the fire. When a drop of water skates across it, the steak goes in and does not move for four minutes. Turn once, out onto the board, and leave it alone.

By the time the sun touched the far ridge we were eating.