I didn’t particularly fear accidental death because I had years before accepted the outdoorsman’s responsibility to understand natural laws, and his motivation for exposing himself to them. I knew my motive: intensity of experience. The intensity was worth the risk. That calculation came automatically, but the danger posed by people seemed different. Nature is unintelligent and orderly, therefore predictable. Killers are intelligent, therefore malicious, unpredictable. I hypothesized that it was preferable to die by my own incompetence or bad luck than to be murdered. But with passing time I
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