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.:. Elderly Man Lifting Log Plate 382, Animal Locomotion 30 Guess what this aging gentleman looks for. He squats, grips a round log, lifts one end high above his head. With ease: either he's fit or that thick log is light, riddled throughout with decay. He peers beneath at the groundfor what? He's some half-crazed, starving hermit lost in the mountains for months, and he's watched the grizzlies ripping rotting logs apart for a feast of grubs, beetles, crickets, ants. Perhaps in the flaked gold decay he'll find a nest of young rabbits he'll skull and eat, his first good meal in days. He needs the strength to go on, to go on climbing over the mountains, rock and evergreens, looking for peace or apocalypse. He has seen wonders: water falling a thousand feet, centuries of rock, layers of time time hasn't worn away. Yet. He sits gnawing his rabbit, guessing which millennium gave him the stone, dappled now with dried blood, fur, bits of bone. Who or what will take him, and when? Will he wake to find a grizzly standing over him, lifting five black claws into the starlight? Will he consider a moment his life, his years on earth, then rise to the five stars falling toward him, delivering apocalypse and peace at once, a blow like timber crashing down? ...

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