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In Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek—where, early on, the author marvels at a single goldfish's delicate fins but later winces when imagining a horde of goldfish laying and eating their own eggs—Dillard struggles to reconcile the complicated juxtapositions of the natural world. ______ nature's mesmerizing intricacy and pitiless harshness prove inextricably linked for Dillard, like "two branches of the same creek."