“Have you cleared it?”
“Not yet.”
“Good.”
That surprised her.
“Why good?”
“Because you haven’t damaged what you don’t understand.”
He pointed around.
“This was deliberately planted.”
“I figured that out.”
“Different varieties.”
“I figured that out too.”
Walter smiled.
“You may survive working with scientists.”
“What are they?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Mara’s excitement dropped.
“I thought you identified apples.”
“I do.”
“So?”
“That’s why I don’t identify them from one fruit and a feeling.”
He showed her his notebook.
Several possibilities beside each tree.
Some common.
Some obscure.
Some question marks.
“Old apple varieties are difficult,” he explained. “Names moved with families. Same apple can have three regional names. Different apples can share one name. Trees were grafted. Seedlings appeared. Fruit changes with soil, weather, rootstock and age.”
“So how do we know?”
“History.”
He pointed at the trees.
“Morphology.”
Then his sample bags.
“And increasingly genetics.”
Walter looked across the hillside.
“You may have interesting material here.”
“How interesting?”
“I don’t know.”
There it was again.
Mara was starting to appreciate experts willing to say those words.
Walter chose samples from twelve trees.
Leaves.
Fruit.
Photographs.
Where possible, he noted graft unions.
He also collected scionwood from two trees that concerned him.
“Why?”
“Insurance.”
“Against what?”
“Storm. Disease. You with a chainsaw.”
“I’m not cutting them.”
“Good.”
He smiled.
“Insurance works best before regret.”
Over the next month, the orchard emerged gradually.
Mara changed her entire grazing plan.
Goats worked only between protected trees.
Trunks were wrapped with temporary guards.
Hazel tested every guard personally.
Three failed.
Mara improved them.
Vines were cut at ground level where climbing growth threatened canopies.
Instead of ripping vines downward, Mara let upper portions die before removing what could be removed safely.
Walter arranged for an arborist experienced with old fruit trees to visit.
His name was Marcus Reed.
Marcus looked at several trees and gave Mara an instruction she did not expect.
“Do less.”
“Less?”
“You’re excited.”
“Yes.”
“That makes people dangerous.”
He pointed at a heavily neglected apple.
“This tree has balanced itself around twenty years of neglect. You don’t correct twenty years in one afternoon.”
Dead wood first.
Hazard limbs.
Then gradual pruning over multiple seasons.
No heroic restoration.
No cutting half the canopy because a diagram showed what an ideal apple tree should look like.
“These aren’t ideal trees,” Marcus said.
“They’re survivors.”
That sentence stayed with her.
As the vines retreated, physical evidence appeared.
A collapsed stone foundation stood uphill from the orchard.
Near it, Mara found broken ceramic pieces.
Old iron hardware.
A rusted barrel hoop.
Then a shallow rectangular depression lined with stone.
Walter looked at it.
“Root cellar.”
Dean agreed.
A short distance away stood the remains of a spring box.
Someone had lived here.
Not casually.
Long enough to build stone walls.
Plant orchard rows.
Store fruit.
Manage water.
Mara went back to county records.
This time she knew what she was looking for.