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Winter, 1959 I still watch the ice accrue crystal by crystal around their orange vests and hats, rifle barrels turning blue and black then white and their bodies like a snow fence stop the drifts and form a mound whose holdings no one would suspect. My hope was that sheathed in ice they'd stay intact until the spring, untouched by animals, when someone's breath or sifting dust would bring them back to life and that their beard-dark faces would appear rescued out of ice, in the newspaper. I wanted the world to save its greatest patience for their corpses, that lying grouped or scattered on some wrong trail, they would not disassemble easily, but would rise up and see the trees shelving away to the campground and their small green tents that had collapsed under snow. And though no one ever found them, no one's ever called them dead. Always they've been lost, as if the ice would melt, the snow blow back into the sky and their footprints lead the rescue party to a bonfire or a snow cave like a room of glass that filled and held their shallow, patient breath. 35 ...

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