Speaker 1: Hollo. I morecan stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Speaker 1: Let's get into it.
Speaker 2: I should have expected trouble the moment. Laura pulled out
Speaker 2: her school worksheet, smoothed it against her knees, and asked,
Speaker 2: with utmost seriousness, Grandpa, how many apple trees do we
Speaker 2: actually have? It was early spring, Dandelions blazed at the
Speaker 2: feet of the old orchards trunks, and my two grandchildren,
Speaker 2: Laura twelve, studious and Peter nine, good hearted but distractable,
Speaker 2: sat beside me on the mossy stone wall bordering the
Speaker 2: lowest orchard row. Their project for Missus Forcyth's math and
Speaker 2: Geography class involved mapping a real world place important to
Speaker 2: your family and crucially labeling every unique feature, including, of course,
Speaker 2: the precise number of apple trees. Easy, I said, brushing
Speaker 2: soil from my jenes and feeling the gentle swell of
Speaker 2: old pride. Twenty six years I'd taught math at Andover
Speaker 2: High School, the last five tutoring part time after retirement.
Speaker 2: I've always prized answers, we'll count? Can we do it ourselves?
Speaker 2: Laura asked. Her pencil was already poised, her long hair
Speaker 2: tucked behind one ear row by row, or section by section.
Speaker 2: Peter wanted to raise his sister in some way only
Speaker 2: a nine year old can devise. We settled on a contest.
Speaker 2: Laura would go row by row, Peter by sections north
Speaker 2: south west, and the island by the big beach. I
Speaker 2: watched them, smiling, aware how memory seemed to slip in
Speaker 2: and out of the present. Here the orchard is a
Speaker 2: living map, old lines of Macintosh and courtland running nearly
Speaker 2: straight from the farmhouse porch. Newer dwarf trees curved at
Speaker 2: the edges, briar rose, stone walls veined with moss, and
Speaker 2: even a few half collapsed ladders, silver with age, stand
Speaker 2: precisely where I expect them, like punctual marks in the landscape.
Speaker 2: After a quarter of an hour, Laura appeared red cheeked
Speaker 2: and slightly winded, having paced three times the length of
Speaker 2: the orchard. Sixty one, she said, Skepticism curled in her voice.
Speaker 2: She seemed to expect the number to feel more certain,
Speaker 2: less odd. Peter came, grinning, dirt smudged chin seventy three.
Speaker 2: He'd even written it proudly in block numerals on his worksheet.
Speaker 2: Sixty one, I repeated seventy three. They double checked. Peter
Speaker 2: retraced the island clusters, counting aloud under his breath. Laura
Speaker 2: repeated her precise March number by number, sixty one for her,
Speaker 2: seventy three for him. Each number, I realized, after a
Speaker 2: moment's thought, was prime, a curious detail which my mind,
Speaker 2: still sharp for trivia, immediately flagged but waved away. Counting
Speaker 2: with children rarely settles perfectly. But then, as I supervised
Speaker 2: my turn at last, clipboard in hand, marking methodically down
Speaker 2: each tag, my total came out eighty three, another prime.
Speaker 2: I checked twice, certain I'd simply missed a tree or
Speaker 2: added an old stake by accident. Still eighty three. No
Speaker 2: sign of uncertainty from the lines themselves. Each row seemed full,
Speaker 2: even in bloom, despite the season's slow start. Intrigued now,
Speaker 2: I shuffled through my shoe box collection of orchard records. Mara,
Speaker 2: my daughter, kept a schedule of plantings and removals. Blighted
Speaker 2: newtons thinned here, three new honey crips ordered last autumn.
Speaker 2: The roe replanted along the pond after that heavy June storm,
Speaker 2: Summing all columns, plantings, removals, accidental death, two trees struck
Speaker 2: by lightning, one lost to borers. Produced documented totals in
Speaker 2: the ledger seventy eight eighty ninety two, all comfortably composite.
Speaker 2: Nothing matched the counts from field or children. Laura watched
Speaker 2: me puzzle over my notes, her keen gaze alternating between
Speaker 2: suspicion and hope. Is there a trick, Grandpa, Not that
Speaker 2: I know of, I said, But the echo of strangeness
Speaker 2: had already slipped beneath my reason. I wrote down each
Speaker 2: number in my own note book, sixty one, seventy three,
Speaker 2: eighty three, Prime after prime. Later at dinner, talk of
Speaker 2: tree counting surfaced over bowls of chili and the sharp,
Speaker 2: grassy juice Mara pressed from last year's apples. I put
Speaker 2: the question to each member of my family, how many
Speaker 2: trees do we have? Mara looked up from packing Laura's
Speaker 2: lunch box, not blinking. Sixty seven, she said, we tell
Speaker 2: the buyers that every spring tony. Her husband was already
Speaker 2: at the laptop, his mind never fully unplugged from work.
Speaker 2: Eighty nine, he said, over his shoulder. I checked for insurance.
Speaker 2: Remember I had to put it in the spreadsheet. Never changes, Peter,
Speaker 2: volunteered seventy three. Laura less sure now half whispered sixty one.
Speaker 2: I paused, every number was prime, confidently stated, no one hesitating,
Speaker 2: no one doubting. What to them was evidently fact. I
Speaker 2: asked Tony to check the spreadsheet he'd used for last
Speaker 2: season's payout. You sure it was eighty nine? He pulled
Speaker 2: it up without fuss, not to humor me exactly, but
Speaker 2: perhaps recognizing the texture of intrigue in my voice, a
Speaker 2: tone not easily faked in this house. Yup dates, stamped
Speaker 2: and everything. He lifted the cup and sipped, unmoved. I asked, Mara,
Speaker 2: did you ever get a different count? Really think about it?
Speaker 2: She smiled, that slight, practical lift of the lips she
Speaker 2: inherited from her late mother. It's always sixty seven. It's
Speaker 2: been sixty seven since we took over from you, dad.
Speaker 2: She brushed a crumb from the counter, as if prime
Speaker 2: numbers were the most ordinary thing in the world. I
Speaker 2: opened the ledger, thumbed through columns marked total after planting
Speaker 2: two thousand and three, seventy eight total after blight two
Speaker 2: thousand and eleven eighty. I showed them the neat handwriting
Speaker 2: my own my father's, even my grandmother's stern upper case entries.
Speaker 2: All numbers there composite, rounded, never prime. Peter undisturbed, was
Speaker 2: building a pyramid of apple slices. That night, I sat
Speaker 2: on the porch, the spring air thick with early tree
Speaker 2: frog chorus, and tried to reconstruct the day. The orchard
Speaker 2: was quiet except for the wind tickling the new leaves.
Speaker 2: I could see the outline of rose, the sweep of
Speaker 2: the land, my grandchildren's footsteps marking what, according to all
Speaker 2: sense and evidence, should have been an unremarkable walk, but
Speaker 2: some comfort of rules had been shifted. It was the
Speaker 2: same feeling as when in class a student's answer is
Speaker 2: plausible but cannot be derived from the problem's conditions. I
Speaker 2: made a note in my retired teacher's log tree totals
Speaker 2: each count unique prime, never matching records or each other
Speaker 2: counting method irrelevant test Again. The next morning, I mentioned
Speaker 2: the oddity to Mara as she inventoried pruning tools. Do
Speaker 2: you remember the last time you counted them yourself? She shrugged, amused.
Speaker 2: A few years ago, Tony likes the spreadsheet, he swears
Speaker 2: by it, but I just walk the rows. I like
Speaker 2: the sixty seven best. She winked at Laura, who grinned
Speaker 2: and rolled her eyes. I suggested a joint recount, and
Speaker 2: this time the two of us counted together, me calling
Speaker 2: out each tree as Mara attached inventory tags, alternating between
Speaker 2: varietals by row by grouping by every reasonable permutation. Our
Speaker 2: final figure seventy one another prime. When we checked the
Speaker 2: numbered tags, sturdy green dipped aluminium unlikely to fall off
Speaker 2: in a single season. The tag count produced seventy nine
Speaker 2: primes on all sides, no matter the metric. I went
Speaker 2: inside and opened the color file, a collection of every
Speaker 2: receipt for removal or purchase since Mara's inheritance of the property.
Speaker 2: Mara's tally for twenty twenty one red plant five, remove
Speaker 2: three ledge a total eighty clean composite plausible. I read
Speaker 2: it aloud, looking for any sign of confusion on her face.
Speaker 2: She only shrugged again, clearly finding the numbers unremarkable enough. Dad,
Speaker 2: Sometimes we miss a sapling or count a second for one.
Speaker 2: No orchard's perfect, But the number I know is sixty seven.
Speaker 2: I sat with that pencil tapping against the table, the
Speaker 2: old urge to resolve hovering behind my eyes. Let's try
Speaker 2: something I said, and called Tony in from the back yard,
Speaker 2: where he'd been fiddling with a drone, his latest way
Speaker 2: of checking for frost damage. Will you help us count
Speaker 2: with your software, I asked. Tony always enjoys a practical application,
Speaker 2: especially one that smells faintly of paradox. Sure, but if
Speaker 2: the numbers are weird, that's on you and Mara, not
Speaker 2: my code, he grinned. He loaded his app, a mapping
Speaker 2: tool using past drone aerials. We marked GPS points for
Speaker 2: every visible crown. When he pressed the button, the total,
Speaker 2: as if choreographed, appeared instantly, eighty seven, still prime, I laughed,
Speaker 2: feeling the scales tipped towards something far stranger than miscalculation.
Speaker 2: We checked the GPS logs by row, by circles, by
Speaker 2: height differences. Tony's idea, each count coming out as a
Speaker 2: unique prime. The children, eager to be involved, suggested counting
Speaker 2: by tree type. I produced the old plastic varietal markers.
Speaker 2: We made notes Macintosh twenty three, Courtland seventeen, Honeycrisp thirteen
Speaker 2: each subtotal prime grand total. By this method, fifty three.
Speaker 2: Not one matches the others. None matches memory or record.
Speaker 2: Peter said, that's my favorite number. I got it once
Speaker 2: in math. I knelt in the sod, hands muddy, trying
Speaker 2: to call up a practical rationale. It's not possible, I said. Carefully,
Speaker 2: counts should a line. Methods may differ by one or two,
Speaker 2: but not like this. Tony, half way amused, said, maybe
Speaker 2: our orchard has a sense of humor, or maybe you're
Speaker 2: all just really bad at counting. I asked him, does
Speaker 2: your programme treat the same marker as two points if
Speaker 2: they're on the edge. He shook his head. It's tested
Speaker 2: in my other jobs, never off by more than one.
Speaker 2: We looked at the old ledger, at the field spreadsheet,
Speaker 2: at Laura and Peter's marching tallies, each result brandishing its
Speaker 2: own prime shield. I tried to think through the angles.
Speaker 2: Could we be double counting trees split or grown together,
Speaker 2: leaving out stunted or newly grafted saplings. But even so,
Speaker 2: the varietes, the tags, the GPS data, they shouldn't all
Speaker 2: be producing unique, disconnected primes. Not if the world kept
Speaker 2: ordinary rules. That evening, our family gathered around the big
Speaker 2: Pine kitchen table for the Thursday routine tea with Mara
Speaker 2: and Tony. Practical chores, the children finishing homework, me repairing
Speaker 2: a battered ladder in the corner. Peter piped up. Can
Speaker 2: we do it again, but with your way, Grandpa? This time,
Speaker 2: I let the children each pick a method. I supervised,
Speaker 2: only pen and paper in hand, tallying as they called
Speaker 2: out numbers for each block. Then as we compared lists,
Speaker 2: the numbers once again emerged. Peter fifty nine, Laura seventy seven.
Speaker 2: This last not a prime, but she insisted on double checking,
Speaker 2: found that she not counted two trees behind the old
Speaker 2: tool shed, and upon correction, her new total seventy nine,
Speaker 2: back to prime. Tony, glancing over, mused, I wonder if
Speaker 2: it always happens, or if you're just seeing what you
Speaker 2: would expect. Now look at the ledger, Tony, everything is
Speaker 2: logged by hand, Always a nice round number, He frowned,
Speaker 2: tapping the lid of his laptop. Numbers can do weird
Speaker 2: things if you want them to, but not like this. Peter, delighted,
Speaker 2: declared this the prime Apple Club. Even Mara, less credulous, conceded,
Speaker 2: it is strange. Dad. Before bed, I glanced over the
Speaker 2: orchard from the window, my mind sifting through every tree,
Speaker 2: every childhood, summer spent climbing the highest limbs for the
Speaker 2: choicest apples. Surely some error persisted. Surely one looked more determined,
Speaker 2: one correct method would anchor this floating array of primes.
Speaker 2: But that certainty was dissolving slowly as frost melting into
Speaker 2: root and soil. And in its place was something prickling,
Speaker 2: an unfamiliar pleasure in not knowing. Through the early weeks
Speaker 2: of April, as spring nudged the orchard awake, the pattern
Speaker 2: only deepened, not only in the orchard itself, but across
Speaker 2: our routines, conversations, the warp and weft of family memory.
Speaker 2: The farm has belonged to our family since the eighteen sixties,
Speaker 2: stretching through wars, blizzards, drought, and all the minor disasters,
Speaker 2: and orchard can know. Its boundaries are old, thick, new
Speaker 2: England stone walls, some nearly shoulder high, some almost lost
Speaker 2: to moss and lichen, all built by hands I can
Speaker 2: almost name for their names, fill the margins of notebooks
Speaker 2: stacked in the farmhouse. Attic mornings, I wake as light
Speaker 2: creeps through the porch, kettle birds rousing in the northern arbor.
Speaker 2: My daily rounds, tidy the shed, reefal bird seed, check,
Speaker 2: sapling pots by the barn for water. I help the
Speaker 2: children with math when they have it, or if Mara's busy,
Speaker 2: run small errands in town. Retirement, so much slower than teaching,
Speaker 2: gives me time to dwell on puzzles. But it's seldom
Speaker 2: as concrete as days spent in class rooms or grading
Speaker 2: lately into the night. Most of my leisure lately happens
Speaker 2: out here. Old dog eared at my side, children darting
Speaker 2: between trees, Mara resting kindling from last year's brush. Family
Speaker 2: ritual anchors us. Every Tuesday we hold a farmer's council
Speaker 2: over early supper, debates about culling or planting, arguments over
Speaker 2: which varietal is best for pie, Fall brings, cider press parties,
Speaker 2: neighbors and friends clustered on straw bales, apple sent thick
Speaker 2: as syrup, laughter rolling out into dusk. Every so often
Speaker 2: someone raises the issue of tree inventory. When my parents
Speaker 2: ran the farm, the annual count marked the change of hands.
Speaker 2: Each new generation obliged to count log the trees and
Speaker 2: write it in the ledgure tucked into the farmhouse's sideboard.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it was ceremonial, more often pragmatic, knowing how many
Speaker 2: to harvest, when to order more root stock. Old records,
Speaker 2: yellowed paper, copperplate script sit in the farm house. Study
Speaker 2: each year's total, boxed in blue ink. The earliest in
Speaker 2: my great grandfather's hands, states total seventy one after planting
Speaker 2: of five new another year after storm eighty nine. Remain
Speaker 2: count confirmed thrice, always a number. It's a practiced comfort
Speaker 2: among us to rely on this ledger. No one asks
Speaker 2: whether the count is truly accurate. Numbers are a kind
Speaker 2: of family ritual. But in light of the recent confusion
Speaker 2: primes everywhere, no consensus or clear match, I've developed a
Speaker 2: habit of raising the subject more often around the dinner table.
Speaker 2: Everyone seems to possess a different certainty. Mara sixty seven,
Speaker 2: Tony eighty nine, Laura sixty one, Peter seventy three. If pressed,
Speaker 2: each insists their number is the real one, or at
Speaker 2: least the one I always remember. I probe gently, are
Speaker 2: you sure? Every year? The same Mara? Maybe once or
Speaker 2: twice it was sixty five or sixty nine, But I
Speaker 2: figured those were mistakes, so I went back to sixty seven, Tony.
Speaker 2: I'd trust the spreadsheet over anyone's head count, but the
Speaker 2: drone makes mistakes. Sometimes it misses the saplings. Laura pipes in.
Speaker 2: It's strange, but I like my number. It feels lucky, lucky,
Speaker 2: I echo. She shrugs, a thoughtful twelve year old's answer.
Speaker 2: I don't know it's my number. I just remember it
Speaker 2: that way. I ask about the tradition, the culling, planting
Speaker 2: the records. Mara thinks a moment, then recalls Grandma Netti
Speaker 2: always insisted it was seventy nine. But when we pruned
Speaker 2: that whole south row, we never actually lost a tree,
Speaker 2: did we? I shake my head, But the details of
Speaker 2: that year blur with others in memory. Depends how you count.
Speaker 2: I mutter saplings, stumps, Tony chimes in, or do you
Speaker 2: count the roots that might still be sending up suckers. Peter,
Speaker 2: whose pace for these tangents is limited, asks, can we
Speaker 2: have pudding? Now? We do yet? Before sleep? As I
Speaker 2: sweep the porch, the question is there, Why does no
Speaker 2: one in this family or its records recall the same total?
Speaker 2: Why is every one so certain? Years ago, in college
Speaker 2: I learned how memory weaves itself through repetition unreliable, yet
Speaker 2: deeply felt the orchard standing through all should at least
Speaker 2: provide a constant Apples are apples after all, But certainty
Speaker 2: it seems, is as slippery as due with some stubbornness,
Speaker 2: I decide to resolve things once and for all. The
Speaker 2: next morning, with Mara, I embark on a thorough official count.
Speaker 2: We will use both physical and documented means, tree tags,
Speaker 2: varietal markers by row by quadrant. We begin with the
Speaker 2: first row fourteen trees, second eleven, third, fifteen, and so on,
Speaker 2: each counted, tagged, cross checked by color and age. I
Speaker 2: call out numbers. Mara Tally's on a clipboard, her pen
Speaker 2: ticking with a practiced click. At the end, our total
Speaker 2: is seventy one, not matching her remembered sixty seven, my
Speaker 2: eighty three, nor any leger number I can recall, but
Speaker 2: again prime for a third time. We go through the tags,
Speaker 2: insuring none are missed, none doubled, this time seventy nine. Exasperated,
Speaker 2: we switch methods and count by orchard blocks, the original
Speaker 2: division my father used before replanting Block A nineteen, block
Speaker 2: B eleven, block C nine each prime. The total thirty nine,
Speaker 2: implausibly low, was quickly rechecked we'd mixed up which blocks
Speaker 2: counted the island area. Retabulating with care, the grand sum
Speaker 2: came to eighty one, until we noticed an error. It
Speaker 2: should have included an outlying trio near the lower wall.
Speaker 2: Correction yields eighty four, still composite, not prime. Yet retracing
Speaker 2: the count, Mara points out a missing varietal marker. Adjusted
Speaker 2: once more, the final number eighty three. Each attempt yields
Speaker 2: a new prime, no agreement, and most galling. None aligns
Speaker 2: with the official ledger total after twenty seventeen. Culling eighty composite, simple, plausible,
Speaker 2: but never what we see in the field. I retrieve
Speaker 2: the fat battered ledger my father kept its brittle pages
Speaker 2: fluttering at my touch. Each season's tally is methodical. Planted
Speaker 2: five lost, three net eighty after blight seventy eight, harvest
Speaker 2: projected apples eighty two trees, all round numbers none prime,
Speaker 2: none matching our actual counts. Frustrated, I ask Tony again
Speaker 2: to try his spreadsheet with all categories tree height, age, yield, GPS, location,
Speaker 2: even cumulative branch counts his own Rye suggestion. Still, for
Speaker 2: every data set, the sum is always a fresh, unfamiliar prime.
Speaker 2: Are you sure the software isn't just spitting out random numbers?
Speaker 2: I press. I use it in work for orchard management. Elsewhere,
Speaker 2: always normal, only here, he shrugs, awed or amused. It's prime.
Speaker 2: Whatever you do, it comes out prime. With dogged resolve,
Speaker 2: I decide to try varietals. Each variety Macintosh, Courtland, Honey, Crisp, Empire,
Speaker 2: the half blighted Northern Spy, we keep out of nostalgia,
Speaker 2: yields its own count. Each subtotal, when summed again, produces
Speaker 2: a prime, but never the same as any prior count.
Speaker 2: Now the notion that simple miscounts are at play becomes untenable.
Speaker 2: Every method, every tally, prime after prime, none, repeated, none
Speaker 2: matching memory record or expectation. Over the next days, my curiosity,
Speaker 2: once just an itch, now a steady humming in my
Speaker 2: chest pushes me to test with rigor. I borrow Tony's drone,
Speaker 2: taking careful overhead photos, which I print and mark on
Speaker 2: our giant dining room map. I decide to plot every
Speaker 2: possible tree, the young, the old, the leaning, the recently trimmed.
Speaker 2: Tony helps me overlay GPS points, double checking with colored pins,
Speaker 2: we match the map to the ground, aligning each marker
Speaker 2: with the earth total from the map ninety seven prime,
Speaker 2: again different from all previous counts. I watched drone footage
Speaker 2: slow to a crawl, scanning for missing shadows. In some frames,
Speaker 2: a tree stands on the far north row, shadow marking
Speaker 2: the slope. In earlier footage that spot is empty grass only.
Speaker 2: I check the sight in person. There is a tree,
Speaker 2: now small but unmistakably present, bearing no marker. We mark
Speaker 2: and count again. This time new locations seem to have
Speaker 2: trees where none had been counted before, or obvious gaps
Speaker 2: stand empty where I'm sure we've picked apples for years.
Speaker 2: Ticking through every tally lands on a prime, a new
Speaker 2: one each time. I vent my frustration to Mara. It's
Speaker 2: as if the orchard rearranges itself when you're not looking,
Speaker 2: She laughs, shaking her head. Maybe you're just seeing it
Speaker 2: differently with the drone. But the photographs don't agree with
Speaker 2: each other. Objects should stay put, Trees don't walk overnight.
Speaker 2: Tony suggests could be the drone's angle, hard shadow parallax,
Speaker 2: some weird bug in the software maybe, But even on
Speaker 2: foot in full daylight, counts remain inconsistent. Next, I pour
Speaker 2: through decades of receipts, nursery orders, tree removals, fertilizer deliveries,
Speaker 2: each document fitting seamlessly for short periods, like well cut
Speaker 2: slices in a pie, but never matching across time. Each
Speaker 2: stretch of years totals neat plausible, never prime. Only when
Speaker 2: you try to summer cross do impossible discrepancies emerge. I
Speaker 2: interview each family member, inviting them to write down, no
Speaker 2: prompting the true number of trees. Each does so in private,
Speaker 2: I compare the slips, all primes sixty seven, eighty nine,
Speaker 2: one hundred and three, each adamant, each different as the
Speaker 2: weeks slip into tulip bloom. I share the problem with Hannah,
Speaker 2: our closest neighbor. We sit on lawn chairs at the
Speaker 2: far edge where the Peterson's dogwood crowd the stone wall.
Speaker 2: I describe the problem with a laugh, half expecting it
Speaker 2: to sound foolish. Spoken aloud, She frowns lightly, then, without
Speaker 2: a beat, says, ours is always one hundred and one.
Speaker 2: Don't know why, always has been, even after the big storm.
Speaker 2: She shrugs, unconcerned, opens another soda. I ask, doesn't that
Speaker 2: strike you as strange. I thought after the twenty fourteen freeze,
Speaker 2: you lost almost a dozen trees. She chuckles, Oh, probably,
Speaker 2: but we still just say one O one Peterson's two.
Speaker 2: I guess every farm got its number on a whim.
Speaker 2: I call a meeting of the local orchardest co Op
Speaker 2: at the church hall, with the long for mica tables
Speaker 2: and burnt coffee in paper urns. The main purpose is
Speaker 2: to gripe about weather and compare notes on the viability
Speaker 2: of organic pest control. Still, when I bring up the
Speaker 2: question how many trees in your orchard, each owner responds
Speaker 2: Ours is eighty three, says the Lemule boy, one hundred
Speaker 2: and nine. The Felders claim ninety seven, the Chens each
Speaker 2: I realize afterwards in a daze a prime number. I
Speaker 2: check later, and it holds. I visit physically some of
Speaker 2: these orchards later, walking the rose with Laura and Peter.
Speaker 2: We check clip board in hand, and again every method
Speaker 2: yields a prime, yet never matching what their owners had
Speaker 2: said nor each other. Afterwards, I search family albums, flipping
Speaker 2: through century old black and white group portraits. Among the
Speaker 2: may blossom, All one hundred three trees in bloom reads
Speaker 2: a caption in blue ink. Yet the photo, grainy, clouded,
Speaker 2: shows rose that reasonably could contain that many, or perhaps
Speaker 2: sixty five, perhaps ninety, nothing concrete, nothing to count. The
Speaker 2: numbers hover on the edge of proof and presumption. In
Speaker 2: every picture from the nineteen twenties dusty and faded to
Speaker 2: the gaudy codochrome nineteen seventies to iPhone images from last fall,
Speaker 2: the same a note pennied, always referencing a prime number,
Speaker 2: never repeated, never matching any count I've heard aloud. One afternoon,
Speaker 2: after planting a new sapling between two older trees, Peter says,
Speaker 2: did we change the number? Grandpa? I think, for a moment,
Speaker 2: do a quick sum of last season's declared totals, and laugh.
Speaker 2: I suppose we did. But what is it now? He grins,
Speaker 2: ninety one, then counts again, No, ninety three. I shake
Speaker 2: my head, bemused. The longer I watch, the harder, I say, Church,
Speaker 2: the stranger, the contradictions, every method, every person, every photographic
Speaker 2: record yields their own new prime number, never repeated, never
Speaker 2: matching knowledge, memory, or the hard logic of the ledger.
Speaker 2: I begin to see the orchard only in the medium
Speaker 2: of this riddle. A prism that refracts certainty into more
Speaker 2: dazzling confusion. It's near midsummer by the time I reach
Speaker 2: what feels like a tipping point, not resignation, but a
Speaker 2: transformation in what I'm actually questioning. For weeks, I've assumed
Speaker 2: that if I just choose the right method, the correct data,
Speaker 2: or the best instrument a drone, a tally marker, a spreadsheet,
Speaker 2: I'll force reality to comply that there is a real
Speaker 2: number of trees, a truth waiting under the confusion. But
Speaker 2: as Laura and I, careful now attempt yet another count,
Speaker 2: she says, maybe it's not about the counting any more, Grandpa.
Speaker 2: Her tone is tentative, gentle, reassuring in the way only
Speaker 2: someone trying to comfort a math teacher can be. She
Speaker 2: is right. Perhaps my mistake was to assume that counting,
Speaker 2: a tool of logic order, could, in this patch of Earth,
Speaker 2: resolve what seems intent on staying uncertain. It's not just
Speaker 2: that the number changes. It is always prime, always different,
Speaker 2: no matter how precisely we try. A memory surfaces. As
Speaker 2: a child, I overheard my great grand uncle Eli defending
Speaker 2: his mystical count against my grandfather. It's always prime, I
Speaker 2: remember him crying, shaking a bony finger. Always has been,
Speaker 2: since old Thomas came up from the coast. Nobody believed Eli,
Speaker 2: least of all my father, and yet prime prime, prime
Speaker 2: through every generation? Could this oddity stretch back through time?
Speaker 2: Rooted in the very soil? A valley wide joke on arithmetic.
Speaker 2: One evening, walking the north fence, I brush my hands
Speaker 2: against the nearest trunk, trying to feel its shape in
Speaker 2: the dusk, measuring space not by eye but by touch.
Speaker 2: The regularity I expect roe gap row is there, but
Speaker 2: only up close. Looking up with the moon just rising,
Speaker 2: I can swear the line seems subtly different from yesterday.
Speaker 2: Is it the light, the mood of the mind, or
Speaker 2: something deeper? A kind of landscape psychology, a trick of tradition,
Speaker 2: bending the orchard into prime partitions no matter the count.
Speaker 2: What if reality here isn't wrong, but rather my method,
Speaker 2: my neat seeking perception, fails to grasp the orchard's logic.
Speaker 2: Perhaps the land itself and our memory of it, insists
Speaker 2: on prime boundaries, shaping every act of account or recount
Speaker 2: to fit a pattern we are only now perceiving. That night,
Speaker 2: I resolve the answer if it can be called, that
Speaker 2: must lie in the details. I've ignored, the histories, the traditions,
Speaker 2: the lived memory, may be even something structural in the land,
Speaker 2: or the habits of mind grown over generations of counting.
Speaker 2: In the days that follow, I make it my task
Speaker 2: to gather every available record, every old map, and revisit
Speaker 2: the orchard's physical layout with greater scrutiny. No longer do
Speaker 2: I seek merely to fix a final number, but understand
Speaker 2: what it means that the number never settles, never allows
Speaker 2: itself to be pinned, but always slips, shifting prime to
Speaker 2: unruly prime. One afternoon, climbing the farmhouse attic steep narrow stairs,
Speaker 2: I search among the detritus of generations, trunks of moth
Speaker 2: worn costumes, bundles of ragged comic books, and faded field hats.
Speaker 2: In a battered tin box that smells faintly of linseed
Speaker 2: and dust, I find a packet hand drawn maps, some
Speaker 2: delicate as spiderwebs, others bold as children's coloring, each folded
Speaker 2: with odd precision. Written in the margin of the oldest
Speaker 2: map of the full orchard seventeen ninety eight, eighty three
Speaker 2: trees counted by hand the next dated eighteen sixty six,
Speaker 2: counted thrice, still one hundred and one another in my
Speaker 2: grandmother's sloping hand after the blight, one hundred thirteen remain.
Speaker 2: I spread them all on the floor, looking for consistency, rows, clusters,
Speaker 2: any repeated pattern. None are arranged exactly alike, borders, drift.
Speaker 2: Some show trees in what I know to be the
Speaker 2: stone piled swale. Others hint at plantings where now the
Speaker 2: garage stands. What binds the maps is no clear agreement,
Speaker 2: no fixed geometry, only the haunting regularity. Every map states
Speaker 2: a total that is prime and never the same as
Speaker 2: any other. Some posters include notes in the corner storm
Speaker 2: took seven ninety seven remain grafted new limb count unchanged.
Speaker 2: I see the signature of more than a dozen hands
Speaker 2: across two centuries, each conveying unwavering certainty. Among the younger maps,
Speaker 2: a different tone, colored markers, stickers, childlike scrawls, best crop
Speaker 2: ninety seven trees or one hundred three trees in bloom.
Speaker 2: The photografts in the accompanying album, as ever, are ambiguous.
Speaker 2: Lines and clusters could justify either total or another entirely.
Speaker 2: No count resolvable, but each description steadfast. Each generation's map
Speaker 2: never matches its predecessor in arrangement or number, but every
Speaker 2: one claims a prime total, a fact that prickles at
Speaker 2: my mathematical mind. The final clue is in a small
Speaker 2: annotation in unfamiliar ink at the bottom of a century
Speaker 2: old vellum. C. Petersen's have always had eighty nine, lucky
Speaker 2: even after flood. Not my family, but close neighbors similarly afflicted.
Speaker 2: I sit on the attic floor, daylight sifting through the
Speaker 2: tiny window, the edges of the map's glowing honey bright.
Speaker 2: I realize at last that the mystery isn't a failure
Speaker 2: of counting, or even of memory. It is something broader.
Speaker 2: The orchard's anomaly is not personal, not even limited to
Speaker 2: our farm. It's older, woven through neighboring families, a pattern
Speaker 2: unbroken by time, storm or logic. A chill of recognition
Speaker 2: climbs my arms. Not fear, but the thrill of standing
Speaker 2: at the edge of mystery, knowing the riddle is both
Speaker 2: larger and gentler than I first imagined. Not a question
Speaker 2: of trees, but of how people and place, memory and
Speaker 2: number conspire over generations to create a living contradiction. I
Speaker 2: gather the maps, the records, the ledger, and descend mind humming.
Speaker 2: I believe now the answer lies not in the arithmetic
Speaker 2: of counting, but in a phenomenon more peculiar, a result
Speaker 2: of local culture, tradition, memory, or even some unnoticed quirk
Speaker 2: of landscape or perception. Perhaps here in this orcharded valley,
Speaker 2: the very act of counting participates in an unnoticed ritual, subtle, persistent,
Speaker 2: and for reasons I cannot yet name, always prime. The
Speaker 2: attic floorboards creaked as I gathered up the stack of
Speaker 2: maps and found my footing again, the weight of the
Speaker 2: tin box awkward in my arms. Sunlight filtered to gold
Speaker 2: and dust, slanted through the glass and lit the sprawling
Speaker 2: branches on each hand drawn chart in counterpin to the
Speaker 2: orchard itself visible beyond the attic window. For a long
Speaker 2: while I knelt there, surrounded by these generations of quiet
Speaker 2: prime numbers, each one now more like a living question
Speaker 2: than any sum or tally I'd ever known. If I'd
Speaker 2: imagined this was only our farm's oddity, the notes to
Speaker 2: the Petersons, the references to neighbors in the margin, told
Speaker 2: otherwise it had never belonged simply to us. Whatever compelled
Speaker 2: the orchard to yield new, unique, prime totals, no matter
Speaker 2: the method or era, stretched across families, across time, as
Speaker 2: reliable and unruly as the turning of the seasons. By
Speaker 2: the time I returned downstairs, the afternoon had lengthened, with
Speaker 2: Peter and Laura sitting on the porch, old home works
Speaker 2: set aside in favor of clipping dandelions stems into little bouquets.
Speaker 2: I paused by the door, caught for a moment in
Speaker 2: their laughter, wondering how much their experience of the orchard,
Speaker 2: undisturbed by the urge for certainty, might preserve a deeper
Speaker 2: memory than mine. Later that week, as planned, the orchardest
Speaker 2: co op convened in a neighbor's barn, long tables under
Speaker 2: arching beams, the air sweet with hay, the sharp tang
Speaker 2: of last year's cider wafting from pitchers. I arrived, tin
Speaker 2: box and old maps in tow, feeling more scholar than
Speaker 2: retired teacher, nervous in a way I hadn't been since
Speaker 2: my first years in the class room. When the social
Speaker 2: greetings complaints about stringy roots and deer fencing died down.
Speaker 2: I set down the maps. I'd like to ask you
Speaker 2: all something peculiar, I said, letting the light catch on
Speaker 2: the vellum edges. And I hope I'm not the only
Speaker 2: one who's seen it. A chorus of good natured groans.
Speaker 2: Lisa Felder joked, did your trees start growing backwards? Too?
Speaker 2: But curiosity flickered in more than one face. I explained,
Speaker 2: sparing them excess detail, how our counts never matched, always
Speaker 2: landed on a unique prime number, and how this pattern
Speaker 2: ran back through every record I could find, one by one.
Speaker 2: The other keepers replied, as if I'd unlocked a private
Speaker 2: memory they'd always harbored but never compared aloud. Sherman Lemuel
Speaker 2: simply said, eighty three always has been my father before me,
Speaker 2: same number every season. Lisa felders, one hundred nine. That's
Speaker 2: our total. Lucky for us, I guess ninety seven, said
Speaker 2: mister Chen since before I was born. They each recited
Speaker 2: their number as one might reference a birthday or wedding year, prime, unique, unwavering,
Speaker 2: and most importantly, each one different. Have you ever argued
Speaker 2: the count I pressed, Nah, replied Lisa. We trust our way,
Speaker 2: the buyers or the state. Well, they see it, how
Speaker 2: they see it. Sherman shook his head, seeing my troubled face.
Speaker 2: Everything in its own measure. Nobody ever ever agrees where
Speaker 2: the orchard ends, or how you account for the old
Speaker 2: crabapple in the hedgerow. Anyhow, Mary Peterson, who'd overheard, laughed,
Speaker 2: I've lived through four storms, two fires, and a split,
Speaker 2: with my brother still a hundred and one. The matter
Speaker 2: seemed almost too ordinary for them to wonder at its weirdness.
Speaker 2: Yet for me it only deepened things. What invisible rule
Speaker 2: or traditions cemented everyone's faith in their own prime. The
Speaker 2: numbers were praised as lucky, but the context always so
Speaker 2: matter of fact, hardened the puzzle, not softened it. I decided,
Speaker 2: then it was time to draw in someone from farther afield,
Speaker 2: someone who didn't share the landscapes inherited logic, whose habits
Speaker 2: of numbers were shaped without these old New England stories.
Speaker 2: Humming at their edges, that night, under a lamp at
Speaker 2: my kitchen table, I drafted the first of several emails.
Speaker 2: I described the patterns, attached scans of maps and ledgers,
Speaker 2: attached photos pictures of tree lines whose count still eluded
Speaker 2: even trained eyes. I wrote to Professor Hamilton, my former
Speaker 2: university colleague, a number theorist with a sideline in mathematical oddities,
Speaker 2: and signed off with an admission rare for me. I
Speaker 2: believe I am up against something more fundamental than miscounting.
Speaker 2: If you have the time, I am desperate for an
Speaker 2: outside mind. The reply came within twenty four hours, Bright
Speaker 2: with enthusiasm. Hamilton, amused and intrigued, wrote back, this is
Speaker 2: delightful nonsense. I must see it for myself. Arrangements were made.
Speaker 2: The next Wednesday, he drove up with two graduate students,
Speaker 2: note books and GPS gear in tow. The air was
Speaker 2: sharp with spring, the orchard lush and unruly. When they arrived,
Speaker 2: a soft footed, laughing trio, unfamiliar with the ruts of
Speaker 2: our farm lane or the syncopation of bird song. Here
Speaker 2: Mara met them at the door, offering fresh scones. Skeptical
Speaker 2: but welcoming, Milton wasted no time. We walked the orchard line.
Speaker 2: He explained to his students, Abbe and Lucas, prime numbers
Speaker 2: and counting should be easy. It's just trees, after all,
Speaker 2: But his confidence wavered with every tally. Together they mapped
Speaker 2: by row, then by irregular polygons, even attempting randomized sampling
Speaker 2: and computational clustering on the fly. Lucas hunched over a
Speaker 2: laptop at the tailgate of their car, while Abbey recited results,
Speaker 2: every subtotal, every approach prime, always prime, but each a
Speaker 2: number unique from any family or previous account. Hamilton attempted
Speaker 2: to subdivide the orchard using diagonal lines, coordinate quadrants, the
Speaker 2: Fibonacci lattice, and even by the first digits of marker tags.
Speaker 2: Totals adjusted themselves method by method, but never left the
Speaker 2: safety of their curious primes. He peered, frowning, but delighted
Speaker 2: at one result. Total number of trees in polygonare forty
Speaker 2: one in Polgan B sixty seven in C. Seventeen all prime.
Speaker 2: The unions are prime, the intersections prime. He circled back,
Speaker 2: not with disbelief, but with a fascination I hadn't seen
Speaker 2: in years. After three hours, Hamilton called a break, face
Speaker 2: flushed and grinning. This is not possible, not like this,
Speaker 2: he said half to himself. But also here we are, Abbey,
Speaker 2: sharp eyed and more than a little competitive, remarked, may
Speaker 2: be it's some error in boundary definition, but it's not random.
Speaker 2: Even combinations of regions produce only primes. Lucas double checked
Speaker 2: every calculation, half laughing and half confounded. I've seen quirks
Speaker 2: in census data, but this is orderly. Too orderly. In fact,
Speaker 2: Hamilton noted, subdividing again and again. No matter how arbitrary
Speaker 2: or systematic the method, the result fits the prime pattern,
Speaker 2: internally consistent but externally subjective. What's most remarkable is that
Speaker 2: you can't force overlap. Counts are contiguous. No tree belongs
Speaker 2: to two people at once, yet every account is prime
Speaker 2: and unique. He stayed for the better part of the day,
Speaker 2: arguing aloud, joking perhaps your valley's soil only grows prime
Speaker 2: numbered trees. But behind his humor was a deepening amazement.
Speaker 2: After the last mapping failed to break the pattern, no
Speaker 2: matter the slicing or system, I led the trio back
Speaker 2: to the porch, my mind racing the children. Sensing an
Speaker 2: event had manufactured lemonade, Tony pulled out folding chairs, and,
Speaker 2: after brief introductions, simply listened. Hamilton leaned forward, hands laced,
Speaker 2: and asked, has any one here ever cared which number
Speaker 2: is right? Mara practical shrugged, it's just something. We say.
Speaker 2: The buyers want a number, we give them one. Feels
Speaker 2: good to have your own. I suppose Tony a touch
Speaker 2: more academic than most. Weighed in. It's unsettling. Though I've
Speaker 2: tried tracing every method. Nothing repeats, nothing matches. It's like
Speaker 2: the answer adapts depending whose asking and how. Lucas watching
Speaker 2: Tony proposed, maybe there's an algorithm. Some local custom people
Speaker 2: believe the prime, so the count follows the belief. But
Speaker 2: Hamilton interrupted. Now the counts are individually consistent, each method
Speaker 2: robust under scrutiny, but the moment you step back, you
Speaker 2: see a mosaic of belief. It's like each observer, or
Speaker 2: each family organizes space to their own measure. Abby, looking
Speaker 2: at the maps I had spread on the table, said,
Speaker 2: this is almost quantum. The measurement changes the result, but
Speaker 2: never outside a defined set a field of primes. That
Speaker 2: word lingered, Hamilton borrowed it a locally prime field. The
Speaker 2: very act of mapping or remembering produces its own new
Speaker 2: prime count, a boundary only visible to its creator. Mara
Speaker 2: Arms crossed in thought, responded, but we don't make up
Speaker 2: new trees. We plant a sapling, we see it grow
Speaker 2: some die, some stay. But something about the moment you
Speaker 2: measure another number emerges, and it's as if we always
Speaker 2: remembered it that way. Tony more gently turned to me.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's how families keep their place in the world,
Speaker 2: a kind of story more than a fact. Laura, wringing
Speaker 2: a glass with her finger, blurts out, does this mean
Speaker 2: our orchard is magic? The adults laugh, but Hamilton Cox's head,
Speaker 2: catching the earnestness in her voice. Not magic, he says,
Speaker 2: but a gentle defiance against certainty. In mathematics, there are
Speaker 2: objects whose properties only reveal themselves under special conditions. Maybe
Speaker 2: your orchard or your valley is one. Something in the
Speaker 2: way people interact with this land changes the act of
Speaker 2: counting itself. We sat for a long time, watching as
Speaker 2: dusk spilled over the field. The topic rolled back and forth,
Speaker 2: Hamilton urging us to consider observer effect, Abbey recalling cultural
Speaker 2: phenomena where collective belief shapes local fact, Lucas pulling up
Speaker 2: anthropological parallels. But within all this, a new anxiety twined
Speaker 2: itself in me. Not dread, but the sense of standing
Speaker 2: at the doorway of a revelation. If every family counted
Speaker 2: only their own orchard in primes. Did every feature of
Speaker 2: the land, the old wells, the number of stones in
Speaker 2: a field wall follow this as well? Was this a
Speaker 2: measure of the land itself or some rare trick of
Speaker 2: communal memory, a feedback loop of expectation and inheritance, definition
Speaker 2: and uncertainty. Later, after the mathematicians left Hamilton, promising to
Speaker 2: publish a note on this curiosity, if nothing else, I
Speaker 2: walked the edge of the orchard, letting my mind wander.
Speaker 2: I thought of the maps, the ledgers, the arguments, and
Speaker 2: the easy certainty of my neighbors. It was no longer
Speaker 2: enough to explain. The umbers adapted themselves, not merely because
Speaker 2: they must, but because they served some deeper human need,
Speaker 2: a tradition, older, stranger, and more enduring than I'd known.
Speaker 2: My next stop was the office of Missus Carver, our
Speaker 2: town historian, a woman as meticulous as any mathematician, keeper
Speaker 2: of the valley's archives, and perhaps the person best fit
Speaker 2: to answer whether the root of this phenomenon ran deeper
Speaker 2: than even our family guest. Her cramped, paper scented study
Speaker 2: was stacked floor to ceiling with ledgers, census books, surveyors, records,
Speaker 2: and odd artifacts, wooden plows, school pennants, a battered oaken
Speaker 2: desk carved with a dozen overlapping sets of initials. I
Speaker 2: set out my questions, explaining the prime orchard problem and
Speaker 2: our discoveries. Missus Carver, eyebrows raised, listened, then smiled an
Speaker 2: expression both knowing and slightly dismissive. I'll show you something,
Speaker 2: she replied, and pulled down. Not the orchard ledgers, but
Speaker 2: a battered registry of property lines from the early eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: We poured through accounts of stone walls, wells, barns, hundreds
Speaker 2: of features, each meticulously annotated. When I looked closer, a
Speaker 2: pattern emerged. Numbers throughout forty one stones on the eastern wall,
Speaker 2: sixty seven on the southern wells dug to depths of
Speaker 2: nineteen feet, boundaries set at eighty three rods, distance, always prime,
Speaker 2: always different, but within each family's domain the pattern held
Speaker 2: dates too often, events recorded on the eighty ninth day
Speaker 2: or after ninety seven apples pressed. It was as if
Speaker 2: the organizing impulse of the valley itself bent toward primes.
Speaker 2: I stared at the lists, dumbfounded. So it was never
Speaker 2: just the trees, Missus Carver smiled. Memory has its own rules.
Speaker 2: Every family has its number, its measurement. Nobody much minds
Speaker 2: the specifics, so long as tradition holds. Only outside as ever,
Speaker 2: try to force a consensus. Do you think, I asked quietly,
Speaker 2: that people notice when the number changes? She closed the book.
Speaker 2: Her gesture gentle, perhaps, but more likely they remember the
Speaker 2: number as having always been so. The valley breeds certainty
Speaker 2: alongside uncertainty. We find the prime that suits us and
Speaker 2: tell it forward. I left with more to think about
Speaker 2: than I'd brought. As I crossed back through town, I
Speaker 2: found myself scrutinizing not just the orchards, but fence posts,
Speaker 2: lines of mail boxes, rows of maples dividing one field
Speaker 2: from the next. I wondered what the Petersens would say
Speaker 2: if they ever found ninety three apples in a basket
Speaker 2: rather than a hundred and one, Or if perhaps I'd
Speaker 2: never ask the right question all along. Back home, the
Speaker 2: family converged early for the weekly council. The mood lighter,
Speaker 2: perhaps the air of the mathematicians lingered, or maybe Mara's
Speaker 2: side of punch. Already a little fizzy was working its magic.
Speaker 2: I assembled the children, along with Laura's project partner from school,
Speaker 2: and suggested a stroll to the Peterson's orchard. The Petersons
Speaker 2: greeted us with bemused hospitality. We explained our project, mapping, counting, comparing,
Speaker 2: and with their blessing, we walked the rows, notebooks in hand,
Speaker 2: tracing lines and plotting locations with all the discipline of
Speaker 2: new surveyors. Every count, by every method yielded a prime,
Speaker 2: none matching their family sacred one O one, nor our own,
Speaker 2: nor any previously counted. When I shared our number aloud,
Speaker 2: Missus Peterson only laughed, See it comes out different. Every
Speaker 2: time her son shrugged, unfazed, father swears by one hundred one,
Speaker 2: we let him tradition it seemed trumped inquiry. The children, encouraged,
Speaker 2: suggested a contest who could design the cleverest way to
Speaker 2: count the trees. They spelled out methods, counting only trees
Speaker 2: with visible apples, only those taller than a certain line
Speaker 2: on Peter's cap, only those facing due south. Each produced
Speaker 2: a prime, new and perfect, accompanied by delighted shouts. On
Speaker 2: the walk home, Laura looked up at me, eyes reflecting
Speaker 2: the fading day. Is any number the right one? For
Speaker 2: the first time I found I had no desire to answer,
Speaker 2: only to marvel. I wonder, I said, if there has
Speaker 2: to be a right one, maybe it's always been this
Speaker 2: way because it helps us, remember Tony carrying the drone,
Speaker 2: mused at my side. Maybe it's how we keep the
Speaker 2: orchard from slipping away, a tradition disguised as a number.
Speaker 2: That evening, after dinner, Mara lingered as the others drifted away.
Speaker 2: She sipped her tea, and, after a moment, spoke, you know, Dad,
Speaker 2: it never bothered me. I don't think anyone my age
Speaker 2: or younger ever truly tried to nail it down. It's
Speaker 2: the counting that matters, not the count. She smiled, impish though,
Speaker 2: if you, who ever did settle it, we'd all be
Speaker 2: poorer for it. I thought of her mother, my own father,
Speaker 2: the generations painted in ink and memory, each proposing its
Speaker 2: own prime numbered reality, Hamilton called a few days later,
Speaker 2: more animated than before, I've written it up. Hypothesis, You
Speaker 2: might say, I call it a locally prime field, a
Speaker 2: phenomenon where discreet domains here, family orchards manifest subjective, irreconcilable
Speaker 2: prime counts under almost any measurable scheme. It shouldn't exist,
Speaker 2: and yet your documentation is perfect. The number persists in memory,
Speaker 2: story and practice, but never as a fixed object. I'll
Speaker 2: send you the article. I'm not sure a paper will
Speaker 2: tame it, I replied, Though I thanked him. He laughed,
Speaker 2: a sound saturated with both humility and delight. Let's hope
Speaker 2: it doesn't. The news trickled through the local co op. Then,
Speaker 2: with typical swiftness, reporters from the county paper called then
Speaker 2: a brief note surfaced on a mathematics website. By fall,
Speaker 2: the orchard saw the odd undergraduate sketchpad in hand, wandering
Speaker 2: the rose with a bemused grin, each coming away with
Speaker 2: their own count, always prime, never matching. The annual harvest
Speaker 2: fare gained a new tradition, a prime orchard rally, where orchardists,
Speaker 2: children and visitors alike proclaimed their farm's number with boisterous pride,
Speaker 2: knowing it would never align with any record, but always
Speaker 2: fit within the quiet order that governed the valley. By then,
Speaker 2: even tony our residents, skeptic, had begun to favor the
Speaker 2: game over the answer. At dinner, as the season's first
Speaker 2: apples came in from pressing, he raised a glass to
Speaker 2: orchard prime. He toasted the children roaring. Mara rolled her eyes,
Speaker 2: but the light in her smile was unmistakable. It was
Speaker 2: Laura and Peter who redefined our morning walks, no longer
Speaker 2: mere chores but pilgrimages of play and wonder. They vented
Speaker 2: codes and games, betting on what prime each count would
Speaker 2: reveal that morning, Scribbling their results in a notebook I
Speaker 2: began to think of as our prime field diary. Some days,
Speaker 2: the desire for certainty still stirred in me, the old
Speaker 2: retired teacher's impulse to close the loop, to assign the
Speaker 2: right answer, But it was crowded out now by something softer,
Speaker 2: more generous, the pleasure of counting for its own sake,
Speaker 2: the awareness that certainty need not foreclose delight, and the
Speaker 2: growing suspicion that sometimes pattern and doubt served together to
Speaker 2: keep traditions alive. Once, as Mara and I planned the
Speaker 2: spring planting, she paused to reflect, wouldn't it be strange
Speaker 2: if somewhere, some day someone tallid a composite What? Then?
Speaker 2: I smiled, thinking of my father's ledger, the way it
Speaker 2: never shifted, and the endless variations swirling outside it. Then
Speaker 2: I suppose we'll finally know what comes next, or maybe
Speaker 2: even then it'll simply fit a new stranger tradition. As
Speaker 2: I found my way back to the orchard each day,
Speaker 2: following the tracks worn by countless feet and seasons, I
Speaker 2: grew less concerned with the end point of each walk.
Speaker 2: The numbers shimmered, uncounted and plural, inviting and elusive, And
Speaker 2: with that acceptance, unforced gentle, I found myself at peace
Speaker 2: not only with the orchard, but with the persistence of
Speaker 2: its question, a curiosity never closed, a comfort in not knowing,
Speaker 2: a quiet marvel sustained by its very refusal to be solved. Now,
Speaker 2: as another evening draws close, I sit at the old
Speaker 2: porch desk, journal, open pen in hand. My gaze roams
Speaker 2: the lines of apple trees outside their branches, slipping into
Speaker 2: shadow and gold, just beginning to blush at the tip
Speaker 2: with fruit. Perhaps the orchard keeps its own count one.
Speaker 2: We are only ever glimpsing, prime by prime, method by method,
Speaker 2: generation after generation, apples ripen, the trees, flower, children grow,
Speaker 2: and the sum remains a living, shifting secret. The valley
Speaker 2: hums with its pattern. Our compulsion to count never leaves
Speaker 2: us still what else in this wide world quietly resists
Speaker 2: our need to name, to number, and by so doing
Speaker 2: protects its own quiet abundance.
Speaker 1: And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and
Speaker 1: I will see you in the next one.