WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.040 --> 00:00:07.400 The first time I held one of the hellstones, I 2 00:00:07.440 --> 00:00:09.400 was half expecting to find the imprint of some one's 3 00:00:09.439 --> 00:00:13.279 thumb pressed into it, with a familiar grain of rainbleashed quartz. Instead, 4 00:00:13.320 --> 00:00:16.000 the stone felt unnervingly smooth, the kind of cold surface 5 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:18.320 that comes in and settles. At the same time, I 6 00:00:18.399 --> 00:00:20.519 found it by accident near the bottom of about a 7 00:00:20.559 --> 00:00:23.879 box marked misk rural tool slash pots slash LEAs I 8 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:25.960 was three hours into my third cataloging day for the 9 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:29.760 kinnel And Village Historical Society, knees protesting, fingers, dirt smudged 10 00:00:29.760 --> 00:00:33.079 and papercut. Wishing I brought my old gardening gloves. At 11 00:00:33.119 --> 00:00:35.840 first glance, the box was nothing a child's copper brooch, 12 00:00:35.880 --> 00:00:38.799 hollowed with age, a brustbackut, and half filled with rusted nails, 13 00:00:38.799 --> 00:00:41.600 the teek painted in an ambitious blue dots. Then this 14 00:00:41.679 --> 00:00:45.240 single graystone, unmistakably deliberative form, slipped into my palm as 15 00:00:45.240 --> 00:00:47.840 I cleaned away shredded paper. It was smaller than the 16 00:00:47.880 --> 00:00:50.600 old crocode balls, larger than a conker worm. From noon 17 00:00:50.679 --> 00:00:53.159 sun through the window and edge with precise geometric lines, 18 00:00:53.200 --> 00:00:56.439 triangles within circles of square nested in a spiral. I 19 00:00:56.479 --> 00:00:59.439 turned it over. The etching looked deeper than scratching at it, 20 00:00:59.560 --> 00:01:03.119 niquely and direct, unlike any child's idledoodle. I said it 21 00:01:03.200 --> 00:01:05.480 a sigh puzzle, then rifled through the rest of the 22 00:01:05.519 --> 00:01:09.159 box four more stones, each with their own inscribed puzzle. 23 00:01:09.200 --> 00:01:11.760 A pattern of parallel lines radiating from a circle, A 24 00:01:11.799 --> 00:01:15.640 braid of overlapping pentakens, something almost like Runitec's, but perfectly stray. 25 00:01:16.239 --> 00:01:18.000 I placed them on the table in a loose row, 26 00:01:18.159 --> 00:01:21.400 striving for order. Their weight and smoothness set them apart, 27 00:01:21.519 --> 00:01:24.760 their odd, subtle gleam catching the wintry light. They look 28 00:01:24.840 --> 00:01:28.439 recent somehow, but also impossibly all dot facts adrift between times, 29 00:01:29.280 --> 00:01:32.000 curiosity bubbling. I called through the open doorway to Morok, 30 00:01:32.079 --> 00:01:34.519 the society's chairperson, who was elbow deep in a collection 31 00:01:34.560 --> 00:01:37.719 of ration books across the hall. Morac, have you ever 32 00:01:37.760 --> 00:01:41.640 seen these? I must have sounded, faintly, amused, half apologetic. 33 00:01:42.359 --> 00:01:45.879 Someone's gone to a lot of trouble for pebbles. Morgan emerged, 34 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:48.959 her hair wild above her reading glasses, cardigan sleeves rolled 35 00:01:48.959 --> 00:01:52.879 to her elbows. She gave the stones a glance, then shrouked, Oh, 36 00:01:52.959 --> 00:01:55.599 those scrimtious stones. Nothing much. Folk pick them up in 37 00:01:55.640 --> 00:01:58.480 the hills. She wiped us from her hands on her skirt. 38 00:01:58.560 --> 00:02:01.560 Only half looking kids bring into school sometimes if they 39 00:02:01.560 --> 00:02:03.599 find a nice one. There's always a few about some 40 00:02:03.719 --> 00:02:06.159 years more than others. I ran a thumb over the 41 00:02:06.200 --> 00:02:09.360 triangulated lines and frowned. But no one's tried to date 42 00:02:09.400 --> 00:02:12.759 or cattle of them. She shook her head, her dismissal. 43 00:02:12.759 --> 00:02:16.080 Matter of fact, OK, not really, not worth the fuss. 44 00:02:16.199 --> 00:02:18.360 Every other box there's a stone or two. Sometimes we 45 00:02:18.479 --> 00:02:21.080 toss them into the garden after inventory. Bit of a nuisance, 46 00:02:21.199 --> 00:02:24.000 if I'm honest. There it was a clear divide between 47 00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:26.080 what my hands insisted was out of place and what 48 00:02:26.120 --> 00:02:29.400 the village considered barely worth a second glance. I tried 49 00:02:29.439 --> 00:02:32.400 a further notge these marks. Do you know who made them? 50 00:02:32.479 --> 00:02:36.080 They're quite precise, modern perhaps or older. If you want 51 00:02:36.080 --> 00:02:38.319 to write up a note, you're welcome. We've never managed 52 00:02:38.319 --> 00:02:40.639 to trace anything, and the hills are full of odd bits. 53 00:02:41.240 --> 00:02:44.039 She' patted my shoulder, already retreating to her ladgers and 54 00:02:44.080 --> 00:02:47.800 postwar coupons. Best not to overthink it. There's only so many. 55 00:02:47.879 --> 00:02:50.280 I was in a cataloging day, so I was left 56 00:02:50.319 --> 00:02:52.159 with a puzzle as well as a faint sting. These 57 00:02:52.199 --> 00:02:55.680 stones so marked and deliberate, accounted for nowhere. They didn't 58 00:02:55.680 --> 00:02:57.639 appear in any of the hand typed inventory sheets on 59 00:02:57.680 --> 00:03:00.000 the table, nor in the faded no card files, I say, 60 00:03:00.039 --> 00:03:03.439 votered for weeks, no provenance, no proud of place in 61 00:03:03.479 --> 00:03:06.879 the glass cabinets of the Society's modest EXPII. I stacked 62 00:03:06.879 --> 00:03:09.360 and gingerly beside a chipmug and tanned them, waiting for 63 00:03:09.400 --> 00:03:12.759 a spock of recognition that never quite came. Later, carrying 64 00:03:12.800 --> 00:03:14.919 them home in an altee towel for safekeeping, I found 65 00:03:14.919 --> 00:03:18.240 my mind drifting inconveniently. Wasn't it strange that something made 66 00:03:18.240 --> 00:03:21.719 so attentively would be so carelessly handled. Thus, something found 67 00:03:21.759 --> 00:03:24.560 only in the hills was neither prize nor explained. It 68 00:03:24.639 --> 00:03:27.120 set my thoughts turning in elliptical orbits, as if the 69 00:03:27.159 --> 00:03:29.199 stones contained a quite challenge that no one in the 70 00:03:29.280 --> 00:03:32.919 village past or present had properly answered. By dusk, I'd 71 00:03:32.960 --> 00:03:35.800 reached no conclusions, only the sharpened certainty that the stones, 72 00:03:35.919 --> 00:03:38.400 with their patterning were neither as dull nor as commonplace 73 00:03:38.400 --> 00:03:41.680 as every one insisted, and I wondered very much who 74 00:03:41.680 --> 00:03:43.919 had put them there and why they prompted only shrugs 75 00:03:43.919 --> 00:03:45.840 and offhand laughter from those who had grown up among 76 00:03:45.879 --> 00:03:48.919 these hills. I've lived a great many years surrounded by 77 00:03:48.919 --> 00:03:52.639 other people's mannerisms and stories. Teaching children for forty three 78 00:03:52.680 --> 00:03:55.439 years in and around Aberdeen, I learned how quickly the supposedly 79 00:03:55.560 --> 00:03:59.120 normal can slide into the quietly improbable. And yet I'd 80 00:03:59.120 --> 00:04:02.520 come north to Kinnelan from the ordinary. My grandmother's cottage, 81 00:04:02.560 --> 00:04:04.919 a place of low ceilings in Pete Smoke, sat on 82 00:04:04.960 --> 00:04:06.599 the edge of the village with a squad garden, and 83 00:04:06.719 --> 00:04:08.879 of you that every visit acclaimed was unchanged since before 84 00:04:08.879 --> 00:04:12.400 the Wars. I'd plan my days around routine Monday's shopping 85 00:04:12.439 --> 00:04:14.560 at Grant's Grocers, where the apples are never crisp, but 86 00:04:14.599 --> 00:04:17.720 the gossipy shop. Tuesdays at the Historical Society. Wednesday's turning 87 00:04:17.720 --> 00:04:21.120 composts were mending fences after sheep nosing through evenings by 88 00:04:21.120 --> 00:04:24.199 the hearth, alongside selections from the village landing library, Romances 89 00:04:24.199 --> 00:04:27.839 with predictable innings, local memoirs that revolved around church committees, 90 00:04:27.959 --> 00:04:29.519 and the bound copy of the Song of the hills 91 00:04:29.560 --> 00:04:32.800 my grandmother left dry with pressed wild violets. It was 92 00:04:32.800 --> 00:04:36.920 a peaceful monotony, padded with neighborly familiarity. Every face was noble. 93 00:04:36.959 --> 00:04:39.959 Angus the postman, whose morning rounds accompanied an endless monologue 94 00:04:39.959 --> 00:04:42.879 about rainfall and missed football goals. The Cess Mummer, my neighbour, 95 00:04:43.040 --> 00:04:45.759 always sweeping her stupid twice the necessary frequency, and alert 96 00:04:45.839 --> 00:04:48.240 every rod in the road. Jenny, the only true archivist 97 00:04:48.240 --> 00:04:51.199 at the Historical Society twenty six, in flush with academic zeal, 98 00:04:51.240 --> 00:04:55.399 occasionally trailing fragments of university, jogon behind her children darted 99 00:04:55.480 --> 00:04:58.040 between a schoolyard and the river, inventing rules attack no 100 00:04:58.040 --> 00:05:01.279 adult could follow. Evenings, the old men of the village 101 00:05:01.279 --> 00:05:03.959 played dominoes at the pub, Noses pink and voices carrying 102 00:05:03.959 --> 00:05:06.680 through open windows in summer. Yet above it all, above 103 00:05:06.680 --> 00:05:10.040 the amiable shuffle and repetition, stood the hills, twelve of 104 00:05:10.079 --> 00:05:12.480 them by local agreement, though some call for ten or 105 00:05:12.480 --> 00:05:15.480 sometimes even thirteen. When counting stray knolls. On misty afternoons, 106 00:05:16.120 --> 00:05:19.160 they loomed green and brown bulges running the north horizon, 107 00:05:19.399 --> 00:05:22.120 the line of twelve, as old stories had it. Their 108 00:05:22.120 --> 00:05:25.000 ships punctuated every conversation about place. Take the left by 109 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:27.279 the twin knobs, or meet me with the saddle dips. 110 00:05:27.959 --> 00:05:30.639 Children used them for gains, chasing dragons behind the birch, 111 00:05:30.920 --> 00:05:33.560 climbing the old man for stolen apples, daring each other 112 00:05:33.560 --> 00:05:36.560 to sleep at near the witches shoulder. Tourists asked after 113 00:05:36.639 --> 00:05:39.399 giants and hills or the fabled Kinnel, and treasure their accents, 114 00:05:39.399 --> 00:05:42.480 trailing away before long bus rides back to Inverness. For 115 00:05:42.560 --> 00:05:44.959 the locals, the hills were a background, as fixed as 116 00:05:44.959 --> 00:05:46.759 to whether or the stone Walls school house near the 117 00:05:46.800 --> 00:05:50.360 cross roads. The names wore through nursery rhymes, Their slopes 118 00:05:50.439 --> 00:05:53.360 lent themselves to generations of grazing sheep. Their silhouets marked 119 00:05:53.360 --> 00:05:55.879 the passage of days. It made the indifference to the 120 00:05:55.879 --> 00:05:58.800 etched stones, all them all puzzling. Here was something unique, 121 00:05:58.839 --> 00:06:01.639 tangible evidence of del bircraft found only among those older 122 00:06:01.720 --> 00:06:04.560 finding hills, and it routine ignored, treated with less important 123 00:06:04.560 --> 00:06:06.560 than the crat butter churns or the faded wore medals 124 00:06:06.560 --> 00:06:10.199 in the display cases. Not even Jenny, with her enthusiasm 125 00:06:10.240 --> 00:06:12.600 for overlook things, had mentioned them in our many cups 126 00:06:12.600 --> 00:06:16.040 of tea at the Society's kitchen table, in village council minutes, 127 00:06:16.079 --> 00:06:18.240 in the Parishes, annals of box of cobbon, cuppered notes, 128 00:06:18.279 --> 00:06:21.000 garraled in the Vickers' house. In Backhouse's Meditations on a 129 00:06:21.040 --> 00:06:24.800 Highland childhood, the stones are in no mention worth noting. Instead, 130 00:06:25.000 --> 00:06:27.279 stories focused on what the land had always been, not 131 00:06:27.399 --> 00:06:31.079 what might have changed. I asked Misses Munroir one gray afternoon, 132 00:06:31.120 --> 00:06:33.879 as we snapped beans outside. Why no one seemed interested? 133 00:06:34.519 --> 00:06:37.920 She paused, snapped another string with deaf fingers. Some things 134 00:06:37.920 --> 00:06:41.240 are just the hills business, she said, not Unkindly, there's 135 00:06:41.279 --> 00:06:43.680 nothing to explain. You should have seen mister Munroe picking 136 00:06:43.759 --> 00:06:45.879 up stones for years, tossing them at rooks, never a 137 00:06:45.959 --> 00:06:48.519 riddle in it. But even then I caught her watching 138 00:06:48.560 --> 00:06:52.079 the sky line as if taking slid attendants. On morning walks, 139 00:06:52.120 --> 00:06:55.079 I found myself stirring at the cress birch saddle, old 140 00:06:55.120 --> 00:06:57.759 man knee, name of tongue in cheek convention by school children. 141 00:06:57.759 --> 00:07:01.040 A willing or unable to reach consensus, I tried sketching 142 00:07:01.079 --> 00:07:03.279 a line of hills from my kitchen window, using an 143 00:07:03.279 --> 00:07:06.680 old watercolor set left by my grandmother every sketch felt 144 00:07:06.720 --> 00:07:08.839 subtly wrong me. Either the fifth hill was too close, 145 00:07:09.079 --> 00:07:11.079 or the dip behind the old man's bump seemed higher, 146 00:07:11.240 --> 00:07:13.319 or the arrangement was off by a degree impossible to 147 00:07:13.319 --> 00:07:16.439 pin down. Talking to Angus as he delivered the day's posts, 148 00:07:16.439 --> 00:07:19.160 I tried to float my observation. You know, I can 149 00:07:19.199 --> 00:07:20.720 never get the hills to come out right when I 150 00:07:20.800 --> 00:07:24.560 draw them, He grinned, flicking a dog eared envelope. Ak. 151 00:07:24.720 --> 00:07:27.240 That's because he are not from Kinnealen, not properly. Don't 152 00:07:27.240 --> 00:07:30.000 worry they grow on you. Then he's quinted, as if 153 00:07:30.040 --> 00:07:33.839 counting himself. There's eleven proper hills mine counting the witch's shoulder. 154 00:07:33.920 --> 00:07:36.639 But folk will tell you what they like. Was that eleven? 155 00:07:36.720 --> 00:07:41.319 I asked, not twelve? He frowned, looked north. Twelve's a 156 00:07:41.360 --> 00:07:43.839 nice round number for stories in the guides. Perhaps we 157 00:07:43.959 --> 00:07:47.839 know what we know. His certainty seemed unshakeable. Mine, however, 158 00:07:48.000 --> 00:07:51.040 was a freshly planted thing, swedeasily by ever shifting perspective. 159 00:07:51.639 --> 00:07:53.959 What unsettled me, what edged at the edge of thought, 160 00:07:54.279 --> 00:07:57.000 was how this unchanging landscape was treated as both eternal 161 00:07:57.000 --> 00:07:59.800 and feigny negotiable, wrapped into routine, with nothing fixed beyond 162 00:07:59.800 --> 00:08:03.319 mem and how just occasionally, as dusk foul or as 163 00:08:03.360 --> 00:08:05.160 folk slid from the river, it seemed to me that 164 00:08:05.199 --> 00:08:07.120 a notch or cleft or slope had slipped somewhere, that 165 00:08:07.160 --> 00:08:09.839 perhaps a certain rise hard trunk, or disappeared entirely since 166 00:08:09.879 --> 00:08:13.160 the morning. Of course, I would chide myself for such figuries. 167 00:08:13.879 --> 00:08:15.959 My memory was not what it had been. Also, my 168 00:08:16.000 --> 00:08:18.839 sister reminded me with gentle teasing from her flat and dundee. 169 00:08:19.199 --> 00:08:21.560 But still, why would no one risk caring about stones 170 00:08:21.600 --> 00:08:24.480 carved so exactly? Why were the hills at once icons 171 00:08:24.519 --> 00:08:28.240 and afterthoughts? How could something so concrete as geography seem 172 00:08:28.279 --> 00:08:31.160 now and then as uncertain as the weather. Three days 173 00:08:31.199 --> 00:08:33.559 after finding the stones, as trizzle paned the windows in 174 00:08:33.600 --> 00:08:36.200 shifting streaks, I returned to my cataloging in the Society's 175 00:08:36.200 --> 00:08:38.639 back room, Feeling more like a detective than a volunteer. 176 00:08:39.200 --> 00:08:41.320 I'd begun combing through the most recent entries in the 177 00:08:41.360 --> 00:08:44.440 Society's database, a mixture of handriton and type pages stitched 178 00:08:44.440 --> 00:08:47.799 together by a patchwork of thirty years volunteers. Flicking through 179 00:08:47.799 --> 00:08:49.440 the lists, my eye caught a rec of from three 180 00:08:49.519 --> 00:08:52.039 years earlier, ridden in the fine leaping hand I recognized 181 00:08:52.039 --> 00:08:54.720 as mass Esque Grants, who'd run the society before Morrek 182 00:08:54.720 --> 00:08:58.039 could SETI five stones from Curik Hill marked with octicons spirals, 183 00:08:58.080 --> 00:09:02.440 donated by seven Class Apor twenty eighteen. I hurriedly Rummishtrudinius 184 00:09:02.480 --> 00:09:05.159 labeled crate is plastic lid, brittle with age, expecting to 185 00:09:05.159 --> 00:09:08.679 turn out the matching stones for inspection. Inside I found 186 00:09:08.679 --> 00:09:12.000 three stones, only a triangle with radiating lines, a pentagonal grid, 187 00:09:12.120 --> 00:09:15.039 something that looked almost like a compass rose, but no 188 00:09:15.159 --> 00:09:18.600 octagons and not a spiral in sight. In fact, none 189 00:09:18.600 --> 00:09:21.200 of them matched the written description at all. I checked 190 00:09:21.240 --> 00:09:26.320 the entry, check the box again, cross referenced definite mismatch. 191 00:09:27.080 --> 00:09:29.639 Crossing the corridor, I tracked down Jenny, who was toweling 192 00:09:29.720 --> 00:09:33.519 faded photographs. She stretched, took off her glasses and listened. 193 00:09:34.159 --> 00:09:36.440 Journey the entry from Craig Hill. This stones missing and 194 00:09:36.480 --> 00:09:39.120 the ones left don't match the lock. She fled quickly 195 00:09:39.200 --> 00:09:43.440 through the digital catalog. You sure the crate's right, absolutely 196 00:09:43.559 --> 00:09:47.200 same code, same date, but the description, no octagons, no spirals, 197 00:09:47.279 --> 00:09:50.960 only triangles and grids. She shrugged, catching my note of frustration. 198 00:09:51.679 --> 00:09:54.480 Stones get swapped, sometimes people move things about, or the 199 00:09:54.480 --> 00:09:56.879 list was wrong. Half the school donations are off by 200 00:09:56.919 --> 00:10:00.080 one or two. But wouldn't someone have noticed, wouldn't a tea? 201 00:10:01.039 --> 00:10:04.440 She smiled a little sheefish. Teachers just want the kids 202 00:10:04.480 --> 00:10:07.240 to get fresh air. Nobody's auditing hillstones. I loose sleep 203 00:10:07.279 --> 00:10:10.279 over the silver were sets not rocks? I felt my 204 00:10:10.360 --> 00:10:14.440 protest slipping away. Was I perhaps over attaching meaning to 205 00:10:14.480 --> 00:10:17.440 a child's collection of field fines? I tried to let 206 00:10:17.440 --> 00:10:21.200 the matter rest, but the discrepancy nagged. Why did the 207 00:10:21.200 --> 00:10:24.759 written and the physical so rarely line up? Next afternoon, 208 00:10:24.840 --> 00:10:27.480 determined to resolve things before my restlessness crew, I set 209 00:10:27.519 --> 00:10:30.440 up for Craig Hill itself, boots Leigh type stones from 210 00:10:30.440 --> 00:10:33.120 the society box in my satchel for comparison. I trdged 211 00:10:33.159 --> 00:10:35.440 the well worn path that skirted cheap fields and ranches 212 00:10:35.440 --> 00:10:38.080 of bramble. Craig Hill wasn't much to look at on 213 00:10:38.120 --> 00:10:40.360 its own, little more than a mound. It's summecrested by 214 00:10:40.440 --> 00:10:43.960 dragos and a single wind stunted birch. I knelt where 215 00:10:43.960 --> 00:10:46.720 the last geography clas supposedly scoured every into the previous 216 00:10:46.720 --> 00:10:49.039 summer and began to scour myself the base of the birch, 217 00:10:49.240 --> 00:10:51.080 the shadow of an old wall, the cleft where a 218 00:10:51.120 --> 00:10:54.519 root split the turf. To my surprise, within minutes I 219 00:10:54.600 --> 00:10:56.639 unearthed a pair of palm sized stones from beneath the 220 00:10:56.639 --> 00:10:59.039 cluster of most, both and mistakeably marked with ditch lines. 221 00:10:59.600 --> 00:11:02.440 One shroud a perfect spiral, the other a fretwork of optagons, 222 00:11:02.440 --> 00:11:05.720 so precise it nearly seemed machined. I jotted it, dan breath, 223 00:11:05.799 --> 00:11:08.759 fogging behind my scarf. If these stones had been missed 224 00:11:08.759 --> 00:11:10.919 by a class room of twenty, what did that suggest 225 00:11:10.960 --> 00:11:13.320 about the supposed searches or the certainty of the schullless? 226 00:11:14.120 --> 00:11:16.080 And if they had been found and lost, why had 227 00:11:16.080 --> 00:11:18.360 none of the adults in charge ever corrected the record. 228 00:11:18.919 --> 00:11:21.320 As I stood brushing out for my knees, Gordon the 229 00:11:21.399 --> 00:11:24.200 Shepherd appeared on the footpath, his boar de Collie at heel, 230 00:11:24.759 --> 00:11:27.399 out collecting the hills toys? Are you? He called? The 231 00:11:27.519 --> 00:11:31.120 mused I held up the newly found stones. You ever 232 00:11:31.159 --> 00:11:33.120 wondered why these turn up every year, or even after 233 00:11:33.159 --> 00:11:36.960 whole classes come the hills? He laughed, readjusting his flat cap. 234 00:11:37.600 --> 00:11:39.279 That's just how it is, the hills draw up out 235 00:11:39.320 --> 00:11:41.879 stones now, and then some years you'll find dozens, others 236 00:11:41.879 --> 00:11:44.080 only mud and sheep droppings. Stn't fret too much. The 237 00:11:44.159 --> 00:11:46.600 land hides things in its own way. It was a 238 00:11:46.639 --> 00:11:49.480 gentle non answer, but from Gordon that was as good 239 00:11:49.519 --> 00:11:52.320 as gospel. He greeted me cheerily, don't let the sheep 240 00:11:52.320 --> 00:11:54.320 decide to count, and made his way down the trail. 241 00:11:54.960 --> 00:11:56.960 So I stood two new stones in hand, and no 242 00:11:57.080 --> 00:12:00.799 clearer to understanding why careless misplacement inconsistent could keeping and 243 00:12:00.840 --> 00:12:03.600 a curious and curiosity ruled the small but persistent anomaly. 244 00:12:04.240 --> 00:12:06.360 As the afternoon interrupted into evening and the hells grew 245 00:12:06.360 --> 00:12:09.279 blue with distance, my questions sharpened. If these stones could 246 00:12:09.279 --> 00:12:12.320 reappear so easily, and the numbers never align, what else 247 00:12:12.360 --> 00:12:15.240 might be shifting unseen or unremarked between memory and record? 248 00:12:15.879 --> 00:12:17.759 And what was it about the shape of things, about 249 00:12:17.759 --> 00:12:20.080 the certainty of the ground itself that lets such oddity 250 00:12:20.159 --> 00:12:23.000 slip through so easily? That night I could not sleep, 251 00:12:23.000 --> 00:12:25.480 for wondering was a puzzle in the people or in 252 00:12:25.480 --> 00:12:27.919 the hells, or did it lie somewhere between? I knew 253 00:12:27.919 --> 00:12:29.960 by the time the first birds scattered the morning grade 254 00:12:29.960 --> 00:12:32.720 that had let this curiosity take root in earnest. The 255 00:12:32.799 --> 00:12:35.720 next week, I doubled my efforts at the Society, surrendering 256 00:12:35.720 --> 00:12:37.879 to my long cultivated methas laid out so often in 257 00:12:37.960 --> 00:12:39.919 my teaching days, of assembling order from a figue of 258 00:12:39.919 --> 00:12:43.879 misaligned pieces, I started with the tools, battered folios of maps, 259 00:12:44.039 --> 00:12:47.240 index cars with red incannotations, stacks of photographs bound with 260 00:12:47.240 --> 00:12:50.320 crumbling elastic, piles of children's priced drawings donated from a 261 00:12:50.399 --> 00:12:54.039 century of school contests. First the maps, a box set 262 00:12:54.080 --> 00:12:57.440 from nineteen twenty three, edges browned and notation lapidary nineteen 263 00:12:57.480 --> 00:13:00.399 fifty six in biro and pencil for Council Year do 264 00:13:00.480 --> 00:13:03.559 not Lend nineteen eighty five the Village Millennium Project, with 265 00:13:03.600 --> 00:13:06.519 each hill traced out in colored pastel. At a glance, 266 00:13:06.559 --> 00:13:09.279 they agreed a necklace of hills flanking the law, each 267 00:13:09.320 --> 00:13:12.080 given a name by one amateur surveyor or another, but 268 00:13:12.159 --> 00:13:15.720 the details betrayed certainty. In the nineteen twenty three map, 269 00:13:15.960 --> 00:13:19.000 though old Man's Bump was squarely labeled and drawn, squatted 270 00:13:19.240 --> 00:13:22.919 and squared off, the nineteen fifty six map omitted it entirely. 271 00:13:22.960 --> 00:13:25.679 No such rise were placed instead by saddle, which seemed 272 00:13:25.679 --> 00:13:28.679 to straddle low ground in two binds. The nineteen eighty 273 00:13:28.679 --> 00:13:31.200 five pastel had both needy boxed, but with such a 274 00:13:31.279 --> 00:13:34.279 volap that Nita sat where the real slope fell. Meanwhile, 275 00:13:34.360 --> 00:13:38.000 correspondence in the archive revealed squabbling over names. Knee Name 276 00:13:38.039 --> 00:13:41.200 appeared on two maps absent in the adders. Birch Hill 277 00:13:41.240 --> 00:13:44.000 shifted its spot from east to west by decade. In 278 00:13:44.039 --> 00:13:46.720 one anotote of margin a local grocer alarm since passed 279 00:13:46.720 --> 00:13:49.799 it scold who forgets the thimble ast mc cloud always 280 00:13:49.799 --> 00:13:52.679 gets wrong. The simple list of hills was mutable, even 281 00:13:52.679 --> 00:13:55.399 in the most serious of records. One lay the survey 282 00:13:55.440 --> 00:13:58.279 maps atop one another, tracing their contours with gentle fingers. 283 00:13:58.399 --> 00:14:02.799 The inconsistencies multiplied, dips became rises, rises vanished, and tire 284 00:14:02.840 --> 00:14:05.480 into her hill valves appeared or was smoothed out. It 285 00:14:05.559 --> 00:14:07.679 was as if each map was drawn from memory rather 286 00:14:07.720 --> 00:14:11.440 than from landscape. I turned to the Society Precious photographs. 287 00:14:12.120 --> 00:14:15.000 One black and white from nineteen forty showed a distinct 288 00:14:15.000 --> 00:14:17.639 cleft between two hills, a feature described in later documents 289 00:14:17.639 --> 00:14:20.279 as the saddle, But in all my recent walks no 290 00:14:20.399 --> 00:14:22.200 such saddle could be found with so wide a gap 291 00:14:22.200 --> 00:14:25.679 were at that angle. Other photographs, more recent and in color, 292 00:14:25.720 --> 00:14:28.559 portrayed her lines that seemed less dramatic, more blurred, the 293 00:14:28.600 --> 00:14:32.080 signature shapes always somehow missing the most distinctive elements. The 294 00:14:32.120 --> 00:14:35.080 Skull's mural, painted by every generation since two thousand five, 295 00:14:35.240 --> 00:14:38.000 displayed leven humps, painted with such certainty that surely no 296 00:14:38.159 --> 00:14:40.440 child to paused to question which was missing or added. 297 00:14:41.000 --> 00:14:44.000 But according to every village recitation and every walking guide, 298 00:14:44.039 --> 00:14:47.600 the official number was twelve. Seeking voices beyond the recus, 299 00:14:47.639 --> 00:14:50.240 I began to question neighbors with a teacher's polite persistence. 300 00:14:50.840 --> 00:14:53.679 This s Monroe, my constant companion in cataloging, and beans 301 00:14:53.720 --> 00:14:55.440 told me in a clip tone that the which's shoulder 302 00:14:55.480 --> 00:14:57.639 has always been at the far west. But in the 303 00:14:57.720 --> 00:14:59.919 next breath she recalled climbing it as a child at 304 00:15:00.039 --> 00:15:02.120 the east end, and fell silent. When I pressed her 305 00:15:02.679 --> 00:15:05.840 at a garden club, caloring offhandedly asimus as lindsay about 306 00:15:05.840 --> 00:15:08.080 the thimble, she frowned, declared there had never been such 307 00:15:08.120 --> 00:15:10.519 a hill, and then laid contradicted herself in a story 308 00:15:10.559 --> 00:15:13.879 about a lost doc evening is so definite, before switched 309 00:15:13.879 --> 00:15:17.080 between counting eleven, ten, and twelve on different mornings. They 310 00:15:17.080 --> 00:15:20.039 struck me that each person's memory was a closedly potterly confident, 311 00:15:20.039 --> 00:15:23.519 and yet upon closer inspection, self contradictory and impossible to 312 00:15:23.519 --> 00:15:27.000 reconcile with the next person's account. My inquiries took me 313 00:15:27.080 --> 00:15:30.000 into the schoolhouse, where, with Jenny's help, I arranged to 314 00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:33.639 look through the registered student artworks. Each spring the primary 315 00:15:33.639 --> 00:15:35.759 classes had drawn or pained to the hills of Kinnelon 316 00:15:35.799 --> 00:15:38.840 from the playground. Laid out chronologically on a table, the 317 00:15:38.879 --> 00:15:41.799 images formed the strange usual census eleven blue domes in 318 00:15:41.840 --> 00:15:44.519 nineteen ninety five centuries, then nine and twenty wild shades 319 00:15:44.559 --> 00:15:46.759 of green in nineteen ninety eight, then ten in charcoal 320 00:15:46.799 --> 00:15:50.159 and marker in two thousand three. None matched the official count, 321 00:15:50.320 --> 00:15:52.399 nor even each other, and none aligned with the mural. 322 00:15:52.960 --> 00:15:55.639 I asked the current head teacher, emmss Bremner, what she 323 00:15:55.679 --> 00:15:59.519 made of this drift. She smiled, closing a folder. Children 324 00:15:59.600 --> 00:16:01.480 draw what them I see, or what they want to. Really, 325 00:16:01.559 --> 00:16:04.960 landscapes a suggestion, not a fact. Besides, the numbers never 326 00:16:05.039 --> 00:16:07.679 quite madder there the hills, they are just there. It 327 00:16:07.919 --> 00:16:12.480 was I realized a curiously promissus dance recording was anecdote, 328 00:16:12.639 --> 00:16:15.639 not evidence, and yet to a person, the adults retained 329 00:16:15.639 --> 00:16:18.080 an or of certainty about the hill's identity and placement, 330 00:16:18.159 --> 00:16:21.720 even as their collective memory wobbled unpredictably. On my own walks, 331 00:16:21.720 --> 00:16:25.039 I tested this myself one morning. I counted ten hills 332 00:16:25.039 --> 00:16:27.840 as I set out, careful and methodical toweling each rise 333 00:16:27.879 --> 00:16:30.919 and dip visible from the main road. That afternoon, on 334 00:16:30.960 --> 00:16:33.799 the same path under milky sun, I counted only nine, 335 00:16:33.919 --> 00:16:36.559 the old man's bump blending into the ridge line indistinguishable 336 00:16:36.600 --> 00:16:39.679 unless once quinted ferociously. I checked my note ten in 337 00:16:39.720 --> 00:16:42.919 the morning, nine in the afternoon, same vantage points, same mind. 338 00:16:43.559 --> 00:16:46.320 A contradiction bit at me persist in as coarse thorn's. 339 00:16:46.879 --> 00:16:50.360 How could such concrete physical form shift if the hills 340 00:16:50.360 --> 00:16:54.039 were miscounted, misremembered, or misnamed. Was as simply bad record keeping. 341 00:16:54.639 --> 00:16:56.919 But then whose memory was at fault and whose record 342 00:16:56.960 --> 00:16:59.360 could be trusted? Was there a trick of whether or 343 00:16:59.360 --> 00:17:03.159 mood at play? I tried taking a photograph, digital time stamped, 344 00:17:03.879 --> 00:17:06.400 reviewing it that evening, the line accorded with the correct 345 00:17:06.400 --> 00:17:09.319 count for that morning. Yet standing on my own step. 346 00:17:09.400 --> 00:17:11.440 The view outside the window felt suddenly off, a missing 347 00:17:11.440 --> 00:17:16.160 cleft and altered bulge. No explanation provided real comfort. The 348 00:17:16.200 --> 00:17:18.480 more I looked, the less the wrecords agreed, and the 349 00:17:18.519 --> 00:17:20.799 less any human memory could anger the line of hills. 350 00:17:21.359 --> 00:17:24.279 I tended a week end village gathering, passing among clusters 351 00:17:24.279 --> 00:17:27.799 of old men and women, quietly queering stories. Each insisted 352 00:17:27.799 --> 00:17:29.920 the hills as stood as they worked since before. The stones, 353 00:17:30.119 --> 00:17:32.599 then made small slaps, calling one the sleeping pig of 354 00:17:32.599 --> 00:17:35.480 when it was clearly the thimble, or referencing childhood games 355 00:17:35.480 --> 00:17:37.599 behind at the east hill of which no one else recognized. 356 00:17:38.240 --> 00:17:40.519 At some point I grew certain the problem could not 357 00:17:40.599 --> 00:17:45.359 be merely prodocumentation or lazy recollection. Whatever anomally existed stemmed 358 00:17:45.359 --> 00:17:48.039 not simply from missing files, but from a deeper disjunction, 359 00:17:48.119 --> 00:17:50.599 where every wreckor every sketch, and every folk memory was 360 00:17:50.599 --> 00:17:52.400 out of alignment with every other, and none with the 361 00:17:52.400 --> 00:17:55.480 living hills outside my kitchen window. Late that night, as 362 00:17:55.519 --> 00:17:57.640 a pale moon dragged cloud across the north, I sat 363 00:17:57.680 --> 00:18:00.480 with my notebook and cataloged stones found around me, sketching 364 00:18:00.519 --> 00:18:04.839 once again, the shapes saluted consistency my fingers faltered, my 365 00:18:04.920 --> 00:18:07.960 lines drifted. No two sketches match even one minutes apart. 366 00:18:08.480 --> 00:18:10.920 It was as if the very act of recording, however, ernest, 367 00:18:10.920 --> 00:18:13.240 could only capture one truth at a time, truce that 368 00:18:13.279 --> 00:18:15.559 dissolved into contradiction as soon as I tried to join 369 00:18:15.599 --> 00:18:18.279 them together. I had again to wonder, as the phenomenon 370 00:18:18.319 --> 00:18:21.000 a matter of erosion, a trick of Scottish weather and 371 00:18:21.039 --> 00:18:23.480 shifting light, altering hill lines from day to day, month 372 00:18:23.519 --> 00:18:26.359 to month. Perhaps the collective memory of the community had 373 00:18:26.400 --> 00:18:30.039 simply grown unreliable, each generation overlaying its own preferred narrative 374 00:18:30.119 --> 00:18:32.039 until fact and invention, so in time no one could 375 00:18:32.119 --> 00:18:35.000 entandle them. But each new theory bruised itself and stubborn 376 00:18:35.039 --> 00:18:38.039 recurring facts, the deliberate stones, the recurring but always shifting 377 00:18:38.039 --> 00:18:40.799 patterns with maps and children's art, the simultaneous confidence and 378 00:18:40.839 --> 00:18:43.920 confusion with which every villager spoke of the hills and 379 00:18:43.960 --> 00:18:47.200 the stones above all neither explained nor explainable, made with 380 00:18:47.200 --> 00:18:50.359 a precision that broke no lazy accident. I molded over 381 00:18:50.359 --> 00:18:53.079 in the Society's kitchen with Jenny one blustery Tuesday. Both 382 00:18:53.079 --> 00:18:55.880 of us hunched over tea and a pile of duplicated surveys, sketches. 383 00:18:56.480 --> 00:18:58.759 You're saying the records are the problem, she asked, tearing 384 00:18:58.799 --> 00:19:02.359 her muffin methodically. Not just the records, every kind of 385 00:19:02.400 --> 00:19:05.720 record of memory, sketches, maps, even these stones. None of 386 00:19:05.759 --> 00:19:08.359 them agrees for long, not with each other, not even 387 00:19:08.400 --> 00:19:13.240 with themselves. She considered this, shrugged, then laughed. Maybe the 388 00:19:13.319 --> 00:19:15.160 hills have minds of their own. Maybe we just get 389 00:19:15.160 --> 00:19:17.839 the hills we deserve. Her tone was playful, but she 390 00:19:17.880 --> 00:19:20.200 glanced at the window as she spoke, as if expecting 391 00:19:20.200 --> 00:19:23.519 a retaliatory flicker from the skyline. I admitted, I don't 392 00:19:23.559 --> 00:19:25.599 know what I'm chasing. At this point, even accounting has 393 00:19:25.640 --> 00:19:29.759 become suspect. She drained her muck, grinned, embraced the confusion. 394 00:19:29.799 --> 00:19:32.720 The archeves are stuff with mysteries that never straightened themselves out. 395 00:19:33.200 --> 00:19:35.680 But I could not quite let it rest. More and 396 00:19:35.759 --> 00:19:38.839 more my interest had shifted morphing from a Cattalogero's puzzle 397 00:19:38.839 --> 00:19:41.519 about missing objects into something that gnawed at the reliability 398 00:19:41.519 --> 00:19:44.799 of experience itself. The hills, so solid on the horizon, 399 00:19:44.880 --> 00:19:46.799 seemed to participate in a dance with those who tried 400 00:19:46.799 --> 00:19:50.119 to pin them down, resisting record, eluding summary, quietly reshaping 401 00:19:50.160 --> 00:19:53.039