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53 thermodynamic elegy I step off the trail for a packtrain to pass and everything hums: electric wires strung overhead on androgynous steel towers, flies sizzling on the droppings of horses. Snakes of smoke rise from the parched basket of Hell’s Canyon, and the creek descends in a white rush that makes its own wind, stalls in a dark pool where clots of algae bloom, then pours through the dam in combed rows. A wall goes up when I think too far into it, the way someone chased in a movie runs into a blind alley, the way the earth spins dizzily if you lie still and close your eyes. Lie still and close your eyes, wherever you are, and I won’t try to imagine what it’s like. Where the trail crosses a rockslide, a sudden coolness rises between rocks. I pick one up, hold my hand over the black draft, then put it back. ...

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