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-23Knowing The Landscape My cousin from Presidio always thought lighthouses a strange thing as if he didn’t understand the ideas of TALL and WARNING and A PLACE TO AIM FOR IN THE DARK which, of course, he did. He knew West Texas wasn’t the same as the ocean and he was quick to admit it. He would say he understood about warning ships in storms but that wasn’t the point, now, was it? He was something of a fatalist I suppose. He said he always knew where he was going; he could drive the road from Presidio to the Big Bend at night without his lights on and never veer from his lane. If a man don’t know the coastline, he would say, then he shouldn’t be at the wheel. He had a logic I couldn’t argue with; it was inescapable and inexorable, like the ocean leaving unconfident pieces of wreckage on the shore, like the mountains always coming dead-on towards him in the dark. ...

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