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38 The Big Horn Range Layers of the earth upthrust, fractured, shoved perpendicular against the sky. Canyons hollowed by water—Porcupine, Wagon Box, Lodge Grass Creek— wind funneling over saddle passes, battering cliffs that once were ocean floor. Lodgepole pine on thin air, deadfall drying, ready to awaken in fire. Raven croak and midair tumble, frog-bellow of the nighthawk pulling up from a dive, chatter and sizzle of white-throated swifts. Rainbows and cutthroats fattening down in the Tongue, elk bugle and mule deer snort, moose cropping willow shrubs, coyotes answering a lone sheepdog. Bear scat, lion print, clean bones laid out on open hilltops. Alpenglow flooding meadows thick with blue-eyed grass, fireweed and shooting star. Ancient trail cairns, lichened and sunk, tipi rings, chert flakes, prayer bundles hung in the limbs of wind-savaged firs. The glacial pull of gravity, basement rock heaving up, starlight behind black trees, quiet, a falling awake, an opening. ...

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